


Amalgamate Part II

by flamethrower



Series: Re-Entry: Journey of the Whills [52]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Genre: Alternate Universe, Expanded Universe, F/F, F/M, GFY, M/M, Multi, Noghri, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Time Travel, Time Travel Shenanigans, Venge - Freeform, all of them really - Freeform, epic fucking cast at this point okay?, shoot all the things, tiny little murder machines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 04:48:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7999150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/pseuds/flamethrower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can’t believe you asked him before I had the chance to ask Kix,” Jesse groused.</p><p>“What—why the fuck hadn’t you married him already?” Wolffe thundered.</p><p>“Beeeecause it wasn’t legal?” Jesse offered in his defense.  That was also weird—Click was pretty sure Kix had mentioned that Jesse was dead, but apparently it was Not-Dead day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amalgamate Part II

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by Merry Amelie & Norcumi!
> 
> Cast list. So huge. Have to have charts and notes. *gurgle*
> 
> But hey, I'm on 2 weeks' recovery from surgery as of today, so have some fic!
> 
>  
> 
> (Mando'a translations in the End Notes)

Luke had no sooner left Medical when Ahsoka Tano sought him out.  The Togrutan moved with the stately, steel-eyed grace that he’d always envied in Leia.  Given what he’d overheard in the last few hours, Luke suspected he’d discovered who Leia had learned it from.

“Hi.”  She gave him a brief smile of greeting before switching straight back to their current concern.  “Lieutenant Fane found the point of origin for the transmission.  I took a look around, but whoever this spy is, they have good shields.  I couldn’t get enough of a sense of them to confirm an identity, but if they didn’t destroy the comm that sent the message—”

“I already know who it is.”  Luke sighed and looked down the corridor, observing the speedy ebb and flow of the _Tatius’s_ crew doing their jobs, before facing Tano again.  “I’m just not looking forward to ferreting them out.”

“Damn.”  Tano glanced away for a moment, a gesture that Luke thought meant uneasy sympathy in Shili culture.  Then again, if Tano was Temple-raised, it could mean anything.  “I’ll help, if I can.  Technically, it’s still my job.  I haven’t been fired yet.”

“And no one is making noises about how it would be best for certain parties to resign.”  Luke smiled.  “That’s always a good sign.”

“How is…”  Tano hesitated.  “How is Obi-Wan?”

“Not physically bad,” Luke answered, trying not to wince.  “Mentally?  A lot more stable than I’d expect, given the Commander’s debrief.”

When he’d finally had the chance to report give a formal report to Ghulam, Wedge, and Luke, the Commander—Naasade, Cody—had been stiff, formal, and as taciturn as possible while explaining the Adepts’ activities.  Luke had still found himself a convenient waste bin to vomit in afterwards.

Tano just nodded.  “Anakin always said that Obi-Wan had practice at that.  The one time I asked what that meant, he kind of freaked out, found where the 501st was hiding that month’s liquor still, and told me he would rather drink all of it than try to answer my question.”

“What did you do?” Luke asked, curious.

“Went and asked Master Obi-Wan, instead.  Got a very similar answer,” Tano returned dryly.  “Jade, you’re good with staying here to keep an eye out for potential spies looking for leverage, yes?”

Luke had almost forgotten that the other woman was at his back until she spoke.  “I would like to see them _try_.”

Weird.  Luke knew Mara was a walking threat that could probably kill him as easily as breathing, but he kind of liked her in that position.  It was nice to know that someone actually _existed_ who Luke could have at his back without worrying that he was going to need to keep them both alive, not just himself.

“We do need the spy alive, Jade,” Tano said.

Mara made a sound that might be amusement.  “Alive and capable of speaking still leaves me with a great deal of leeway, Tano.”

“You’re terrifying,” Tano replied, smiling.

Luke started to smile, and then realized what he had to tell Wedge.  “Shit,” he said under his breath.  “Let’s go find Commander Antilles.  He—he needs to know that this isn’t going to be fun.”

Hell, it was going to be politically disastrous.

They didn’t just scare up Wedge.  They found him, Tycho, Wes, and Hobbie gathered together in a lounge with a jammer on the inside wall to keep their conversation from being recorded.

Tycho practically bolted up from his seat the moment he saw Luke and Tano.  “Tell me you brought good news.  I really don’t want to go back to anyone’s prison, no matter who’s in charge.”

“I know who it is,” Luke said, and watched Wedge bury his face in his hands.  Dammit.

Wes rested his hand on Wedge’s shoulder, but gave Luke an attentive look.  “Tell us.  This is us, Luke.  We all deserve to know.”

“Erisi Dlarit.”

“Well…shit!”  Tycho stared at Luke.  “I know we didn’t have a lot of candidates to begin with, but for some reason I never considered her.”

“Godsdammit.”  Wedge still hadn’t lifted his head.  “I’m running this list through my head, people I’m grateful _are not_ the spy, and stupidly glad it’s the new person.  Except for the horrific political part.”

Hobbie sighed.  “Yeah, that does kind of put a damper on finding out who our squirrely fucker is.”

Tano gave them a politely confused expression.  “I’m not sure I follow.”

“House Dlarit is one of the more politically powerful houses on Thyferra.  If this is handled badly, they have the influence to convince the other ruling houses, and the Vratix, to shorten bacta supplies to the Alliance, or halt them completely,” Luke explained.  Leia would be proud, but he kept telling her that just because he didn’t _want_ the job didn’t mean he wasn’t listening.

“Okay.  Who flushes the spy?” Wes asked, but Tano shook her head. 

“Given the situation you’ve just told me of, we can’t just flush the spy—they have to incriminate themselves.  If I’m remembering that sector’s politics correctly, Dlarit will remain Alliance-loyal if there is no doubt that Erisi is a spy.”

“Present her with incontrovertible evidence and watch her try to bolt?” Hobbie suggested.

“We don’t have incontrovertible evidence—” Tano started to say, but Luke held up his hand. 

“Maybe we won’t have to.”  Luke pulled out his comm and activated it.  “Artoo, can you come over to the lounge near—you know what?  Just trace this signal to find me, okay?”  He listened to the binary retort.  “Because you’ll get to have fun if you do.  Fun is always worth it, right?”

When Luke pocketed the comm, he realized the Togrutan was staring at him.  “What?”

Tano shook her head.  “I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that you’re my Master’s son.”

Luke’s eyes widened.  “I didn’t know he was your teacher.”  He didn’t know his father had _ever_ had a Jedi student.

“Hmm.”  Ahsoka looked at him with a Jedi’s strength in her gaze, if not the full breadth of a Jedi’s serenity.  “You’ve handled every revelation thrown at you so very well—better than I would be handling it.  Definitely better than the way Anakin handles surprises,” she added, a hint of a smile at the edge of her mouth.  “I’m just wondering where that strength came from.”

“Yoda was my teacher, after Obi-Wan.  You probably already knew that, but…did you know Yoda well?” Luke asked.

Ahsoka nodded, looking like she was trying not to smile.  “We all knew Yoda well.  He trained every youngling in the crèche instead of taking Padawans.”

“Then you know how Yoda can be.”  Luke knew his smile was fond; he really did love Yoda, even if the little green troll was a pain in the ass.  “I was with Yoda for six months.  During that time, he tried to stuff every single thing I might ever need to know as a Jedi into my head.  Except what Yoda thought I needed to know, and what I _actually_ needed to know?  Those things didn’t necessarily go together very well.”

Ahsoka’s eyes were alight with badly repressed humor.  “That must have been interesting.”

“Yoda has admitted that he was also a little bit insane towards the end, there.”  Ahsoka covered her mouth with her hand to rein in a giggle.  “So, I guess I kind of…it’s easier to just expect things to be crazy,” Luke said.

“I understand completely.”  Ahsoka held out her hand, a wide smile on her face.  “We skipped this step before.  It is a pleasure to meet you, Knight Skywalker.  I look forward to working together often in the future.”

Luke smiled back and gripped her hand.  Oh, there was definitely long-term potential there, an ally he’d needed long ago finally stepping up to the fore.  “Likewise, Knight Tano.”

R2-D2 rolled into the room, blatted a greeting that verged on insult, and then asked Luke what was going to be fun, and dammit, he had better have meant _real_ fun.  “Well, you woke up cranky, didn’t you?” Luke replied, though he couldn’t really blame the droid.  The mission had been intense, dead people kept turning up, and it was just the first day of a new week.

“Real fun, Artooie,” Ahsoka promised, a very dry expression on her face.  “Outing a spy.”

R2-D2 emitted a series of chirps to admit that yes, spy-outing could potentially count as real fun.  “Great,” Luke said, before the droid could change his mind.  “Here’s what we need—Father?” he asked, when Anakin turned up in the lounge’s doorway.

Anakin blinked a few times before the title processed.  “That’s _still_ weird.  Okay, so you know how dead people keep turning up?”

Luke, Ahsoka, Wedge, Hobbie, Wes, and Tycho all stared at him in varying degrees of disbelief.

“Shut up and fuck you, too,” Anakin grumbled, taking a sip from what had to have been caff.  “Look, uhm—I need to borrow Rex, Cody, and Ahsoka.  There’s a 501st team a few lightyears from here that we have to pick up.”

“Wait—a real 501st team?” Ahsoka asked, startled.  “An entire group?”

“Well, two counts as a team, and you only need two to—never mind.  One man is leading an Alliance team, and the other was supposed to be dead after—” Anakin stopped and looked like someone who’d just put up with Yoda hitting him in the face far too many times with a gimer stick.  “So, uh, Jesse and Kix aren’t dead.”

“What?” Ahsoka’s eyes widened.  “But—you said Jesse—and Kix was—”

“Yep, and yep, which is why I need to borrow you.  Out of the four of us, you and Rex are the only two who aren’t currently considered dead in some capacity.  Also, it’s _Jesse and Kix_ ,” Anakin emphasized.

Luke had no idea who the two men were, but he understood the emphasis his father was using.  They were 501st survivors, but also a surviving couple from the old Clone Wars.  That was a positive that everyone needed right now.

“We just need Artoo to stay here,” Luke said, tilting his head in the direction of his father and the doorway.  “Go ahead, Ahsoka.  We’ve got this.”

“We need to prep the ship for extras,” Anakin said to Ahsoka.  “Jesse’s got a niece!”

Ahsoka grinned.  “Excellent!  I bet she’s a badass.”

“I bet she’s terrifying,” Anakin countered, and gave Luke a brief nod before they left.  Luke still felt gut-punched by it; there had been a hell of a lot of emotion packed into a single glance.  Force, were all old-Order Jedi capable of that, or was he just bad at his job?

“I’ll send Wolffe to join you guys!” Ahsoka called over her shoulder.  “People see his hair and eye, and forget he’s the scary-dangerous type.”

“Backup is welcome and appreciated,” Wes said.  “Thanks, Commander.”

Wedge waited until the others had left before lifting his head.  “Much as I appreciated Tano’s offer of help, Rogue Squadron is ours.  Having Commander Wolffe at our backs if shit goes sour is a good bonus, but…this is our mess.  We’ll clean it up.  Tell me the plan, Luke.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

“You ready, my favorite little shiny troublemaker who isn’t named Celchu?”

R2-D2 blatted at Wedge, but he seemed pleased, not insulted.  “We’re good to go, Wedge.  I can stick to the shadows while you handle this, if you want,” Luke offered.

Wedge gave it a moment’s consideration.  “No.  Let’s make sure Dlarit knows this is serious, since I’m pulling in the squadron’s Pet Jedi.”

“I want more beer if I have to play at being everyone’s mascot, too,” Luke said.

“Whine, whine,” Wedge whispered back as Ghulam called all three groups of pilots to order, announcing that there was to be a debriefing regarding their known Imperial spy problem.  “Let’s go.”

Ghulam gave Wedge a sharp nod as he approached.  “Commander.”

“Captain,” Wedge returned, before turning to face the three flight groups.  Everyone was seated by rank, which meant Celchu, Janson, and Klivian were up front; the pilots were seated by descending rank behind them, which meant Dlarit, as a new addition, sat in the last row.

Wedge glanced towards the back of the room just once, catching a hint of a Mandalorian-shaped shadow, and then turned his attention back to the pilots.  “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Commander,” they chorused back, just as if this was normal.  A normal fucking military briefing.  “Good morning, Jedi Skywalker.”

“Not enough caff yet,” Luke replied, which brought about real smiles from the pilots who didn’t know that this entire thing was a setup.

Dammit.  There were some days when Wedge Antilles really hated his job.

“I have news about our spy,” Wedge said, watching Dlarit from his peripheral.  Dlarit didn’t even blink; she was good at remaining stone-cold professional, when she wasn’t being a complete twit.  “Jedi Skywalker’s R2 unit has been working with Lieutenant Fane, and they have unscrambled the first part of the message from the Imperial spy.”

Wedge let them rustle in their seats, a bunch of scent hounds who’d just caught wind of prey.  “I am greatly displeased to discover that Intelligence was right about an Imperial spy’s presence in Rogue Squadron.”

“Then…Celchu?” Fel asked, but even he didn’t look convinced.

“I didn’t say Celchu, did I?” Wedge replied, but tried to keep his tone even.  He still didn’t know how to deal with his brother-in-law.

 _If you’re having trouble with a brother-in-law, imagine how much fun Luke’s having trying to cope with suddenly having a father again, especially one who apparently has a split-personality problem,_ Wedge thought, with a hefty mix of guilt and relief.  Soontir Fel was a much easier problem to cope with than Anakin Skywalker.

Luke was the genius, though—always had been.  He was the one to look at what they did have of the translated transmission, even if they couldn’t pull the vocals out—but note that they _did_ have enough information to eventually dig out vocals that could be matched by computer to confirm an identity.

“I want you to all hear this at once, so there are no rumors, no mistakes, no paranoia.  We all know, and we can deal with this issue and move on with our jobs and lives,” Wedge said in a harsh voice.  “Artoo, if you would, please.”

R2-D2 burbled and played the doctored transmission.  The astromech did an excellent job of using old recordings to sub in Dlarit’s voice where they knew it would eventually be found. 

Wedge had to give Dlarit credit.  She didn’t try to deny it until thirty seconds into the replayed transmission, as other pilots began to shift in place.

“This is ridiculous,” Dlarit spat, while the Rogues, Corsairs, and Gauntlets turned or looked at her in confusion, pity, or blatant anger.  “This is nothing more than politics, an attempt to gain control of my House on Thyferra in order to push for more bacta for the Rebellion.”

“The Alliance,” Celchu corrected in a soft voice.

Dlarit froze for a heartbeat.  “What?”

“The Alliance.  Or the New Republic, whatever we decide to go with.  The only people left who call us the Rebellion are either not on board, or still Imps,” Celchu said, a broad smile on his face.  “So it’s kind of odd that you dropped the R-word, there.  Funny coincidence, right?”

“Politics has nothing to do with your allegiance on Thyferra,” Luke said in a calm, casual voice.  Then his tone hardened in a way that sent crawling chills down Wedge’s back.  “This does, however, have _everything_ to do with the fact that you have done your level best to frame a very good friend of mine for crimes he would never even contemplate committing.”

Wedge swallowed as he noted the wide-eyed look of shock on many faces, Dlarit’s included.  Okay, so maybe he understood the Anakin Skywalker/Vader thing a bit better now.  Luke would never, ever be anything like Vader, but damn, Luke knew how to pull out the intimidation factor in a way he’d never managed when they were just stick-jockeys together.

Apparently, that was the trigger—or maybe it was R2’s fabricated vocal of Dlarit confirming her allegiance to the Empire.  Either way, that was when she chose to bolt.

Dlarit ran straight into a wall of stone-gray Mandalorian armor.  “‘Scuse me,” Commander Wolffe growled, staring down at Dlarit.  “Seems like you and I have an appointment.”

“Get fucked!” Dlarit snarled, pulling her blaster and taking a shot at the old clone.

She managed one blast, a burst of energy that did nothing more than leave a blackened spot on the shoulder of Wolffe’s beskar’gam, before crumpling from a stun shot.  Gavin Darklighter was scowling as he reholstered his blaster.  “Shoot at one of my favorite Clone Wars commanders?  No way.  Fuck that, fuck her, and fuck all of this.”

“Kid, I didn’t even know you were old enough for that word to be in your vocabulary,” Corran Horn teased him.

“Fuck you, too,” Darklighter snapped, and then lowered his head, tears running from his eyes.  “She acted like she was my friend.”

Rhysati Ynr came forward and wrapped her arm around Gavin’s thin shoulders.  “Same for all of us, dearheart,” she said to him.  “It’s okay.”

“Good shot, by the way,” Fel said.  “Those stun beams aim wide.  You could have gotten the Commander, too.”

“Not likely,” Gavin muttered.  Wedge added his own silent agreement; nothing that shoddy, not from the Darklighter line.  They’d always been damned good shots.

Commander Wolffe nudged Dlarit’s unconscious, prone body lying on the floor.  “Was that enough to convince the politicians that we have an honest-to-fuck traitor, and the bacta stream won’t dry up on us?”

“Better be,” Janson answered, rubbing at his eyes with both hands.  “Good job, Artoo.”

R2-D2 warbled in response, a tone that picked up in pace when Luke put his hand on the astromech’s dome.  “Someone escort the Commander and his package to a detainment cell, please,” Luke said.  “I’d hate for us to get this far just for her to be one of those types who knows how to throw off a stun five minutes early.”

Ghulam strode forward from where he’d been lurking in the rear of the room.  “A full security detail is waiting outside, and anyone who would like to accompany the group as extra assistance is entirely welcome to join them.”

Most of the pilots took Ghulam up on the offer.  Wedge, Tycho, Luke, and Corran sat down in the abandoned commissary.

“Fuck,” Corran offered finally.

“Yay, I don’t have to spend the rest of my life in jail.”  Tycho’s head was tilted forward, an exhausted slump to his shoulders and a dreary expression on his face.  “Just six more months of post-briefings, and maybe I’ll be left alone for a while!”

“Tycho, you have my official blessing to take several weeks of your long overdue leave, say, oh, any time starting now,” Wedge offered.  “You know.  Since we have command confirmation on your non-spy status.”

Tycho stared at Wedge.  “Where the hell would I go?”

“Leia told me that you’re one of the only Alderaan survivors on the list that’s never been to the Graveyard,” Luke said quietly.

Tycho turned and stared at him.  “I—yeah.  I guess…I guess seeing home—what’s left of home—I should do that.  Grief and psychology and shit, right?”

Luke nodded.  “I’ve been told it’s a process,” he said with a faint smile.

“Have you ever?  Been home, I mean,” Corran asked Luke.  “Most of us know how you got into this gig, being our singular famous Jedi hero.”

“Just the once,” Luke said, his gaze going distant.  “Did some cleanup that I didn’t bother with before.  Not that there was much, anyway.  Jawas will take whatever isn’t nailed down, and since the place was half blown-up, not a lot of it was secured.  I just…it wasn’t home anymore.  But it did help, a little bit, to see it.”

“Okay.  Graveyard.  Tour the galaxy.  Maybe convince Targeter to go on another date with me, though she’s on-mission at the moment.”  Tycho sighed.  “I’m so fucking glad that this is over with.”

Wedge leaned over so he could wrap his arm around Tycho’s waist, resting his head against his friend’s shoulder.  “So am I.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

Anakin’s first thing on his to-do list the moment they got back from Wivvelinnt II was to check on Obi-Wan.  He was still completely drugged to the gills and unconscious, but he didn’t feel panicky to Anakin’s senses, not like the mental bomb blast that had awoken him before. 

Kix swiped medical charts, started reading, and then began filling the air with Mando’a and Basic, curses mixed with medical blither that Anakin always pretended not to understand.  Jesse and Anakin shared a look; Anakin escaped while he still had the chance, trying not to dwell on how familiar it had all felt.

He went straight back to the _Figment_ , ready for a break from people and responsibilities and his really gods-awful reputation in what used to be his own timeline.

Time travel sucked.  He did not recommend it.  Ever.

Anakin paused, glancing down at the coordinates scored into the metal plating of the hold floor.  Obi-Wan might be amused to see how Anakin had literally clawed the path to Byss into the floor with the fingertips of his metal hand, but Anakin was just trying to figure out how to buff out the damage without needing to replace that entire stupid section of flooring.

Then he got a comm call, but it was a Noghri comm call, and those were always fun.  Stress-reducing, anyway; the Noghri did not fuck around with small talk.  He grabbed a ration bar on his way over to sit on the table and opened up the channel.

“ _Ary’ush_.  You are making it very difficult for us to do our jobs,” Khabarakh said.

 “Sorry that you didn’t make it to the party on time,” Anakin said, holding the comm in a two-fingered grip so he could unwrap the ration bar with his free three fingers and other hand.  He realized too late that it was loud wrapper crinkling right next to a speaker.  Khabarakh would probably forgive him.  Or, he would wake Anakin up with the really loud crackle of the sound repeated via a speaker planted over Anakin’s head about two weeks from now.  Khabarakh liked prank wars, usually because he won them all.

“We failed, and you are apologizing?  _Ary’ush,_ I do not believe you remember how this relationship is supposed to work,” Khabarakh chastised him.  “It is we who are sorry.  We were delayed by the Deep Core Security Zone Blockade.”

“Oh, yeah?  And how many Star Destroyers is that blockade now missing?” Anakin countered, grinning.  The expression wilted after he started chewing.  Dear gods, he was pretty sure there was actual dried bantha shit that would taste better.

“Two,” Khabarakh answered, sounding gleeful.  “It would have been a pleasure to destroy more, but we could not do so without risking damage to our craft.”

“Two SDs with an armored military shuttle.”  Anakin smiled.  “Good job, guys.  We almost have you beat—took out an entire Imperial facility with just seven people.”

“That does not surprise me at all.  The facility you speak of—do you wish us to proceed to its location and finish destroying it?” Khabarakh asked.

“Nah, no point.  One of my friends blew it up already,” Anakin said.

Khabarakh let out a disappointed sigh.  “You go into danger without us, which keeps us from fulfilling our vows, and then leave us nothing to destroy?  _Ary’ush_ , you are cruel.”

“Hey, two SDs, Khabarakh.  That is definitely not nothing.”

“Very well.”  Khabarakh still sounded unhappy, but he was probably coping better than the others.  They were older, and it was harder to leave the old habits behind.  “Whemmha wishes to know where you are, _ary’ush_.”

“Sitting in deep space a few light years out from Kuat,” Anakin answered.  “I know we’re due to hit hyperspace in less than an hour, so we’re going to…”  Anakin turned his head as Luke approached and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“2nd Fleet.”  Luke leaned against the wall, arms crossed.  “Not so sure that they’ll let just anyone join the fun, though.”

Anakin smiled as Khabarakh said, “They will not even know we are there.  What else do you wish of us, _ary’ush?_ ”

“Nothing—actually, wait.  Would you see if another team is available to go back to Lothal?  I want to know how things are going, and Obi-Wan will _definitely_ want to know.  Make sure we don’t have two fleets trying to destroy each other, and then check on Lothal’s leadership and the rest of the Spectre team.  If there’s anything unusual going on, I’d like to hear about it.”

“As my _ary’ush_ wishes,” Khabarakh said.  “Should we allow ourselves to be seen?”

“For the most part?  No, we don’t need to accidentally panic anyone,” Anakin answered.  “But check in with Silver Greene and the Spectres.  I bet they’d like to know their friends are all right.  Try to do it without terrifying the Jedi, though.  They’re kind of jumpy.”

“At least you remember that we are appropriately terrifying,” Khabarakh said, pleased.

“Yeah. _Figment_ out.”  Anakin turned off the comm before Khabarakh could try to embarrass him with one of the traditional farewells.  The sly little bastard did it on purpose.

“Tano was fretting without trying to let on that she was fretting about you disappearing on everyone, so I came to check on you,” Luke said, to explain his presence.  “What are they calling you?”

“Uh, long story, but it means ‘savior.’”  Anakin put the comm away and contemplated the rest of the ration bar.  Six months ago, it would have been ambrosia, but now that he didn’t have to subject himself to bad food…

He tossed the bar into the galley’s recycler.  Good riddance. 

“That reminds me, though,” Anakin said.  “If a bunch of terrifying-looking short little gray men and women show up, say that they’re your new bodyguards, and refuse to take no for an answer?  You’ll never get rid of them; just try to find things for them to do.”

“I see.”  Luke had a tight rein on his curiosity, but Anakin could still sense it.  “And why am I going to have to find an entire team of terrifying bodyguards something to do?”

“Ten-generation Life Debt,” Anakin said, and sighed when both of Luke’s eyebrows went up.

“Ten generations?” Luke repeated in astonishment.  “What did you do?”

“Hey, ten generations is a lot shorter than it used to be,” Anakin protested, ignoring the question for the moment.  Things were complicated enough, and there were so many awkward conversations in his future that it was making his head hurt.  “It was hard work to negotiate them down to that.”

“Uh huh.”  Luke gave him a sharp, inquisitive look that reminded Anakin of Padmé.  “What was it before that?”

“No generation limit.  It was forever.”

Luke dropped his arms, his expression shifting to polite disbelief.  “Is this related to the long story part?”

Anakin smiled sheepishly.  “Yeah.  I’ll tell you later, but in the meantime, uh—how are you doing?”

“Well,” Luke began, drawing out the word, “I’m on a ship with a bunch of people who are supposed to be dead, but aren’t, which I still don’t have a full explanation for.  Oh, and I have thirty-six pilots and a lot of crewmembers who are pretty much acting like kids that’ve been locked in a candy store.”

“So, not bad then, right?” Anakin asked.  He was glad when Luke smiled in response.  He doubted he would be handling things half so well.  “Is Wolffe still knee-deep in pilots?  Everyone was flocking around him like ducklings before I came in here.”

“He’s enjoying the attention,” Luke replied, a hint of tension coloring the Force around him for a moment.  “It’s a nice bit of stress relief for both parties, believe me.”

Anakin nodded; when he’d made his escape, Wolffe had been telling war stories in the ship’s commissary like a proud uncle.  It must have been nice to tell people good things from the war, instead of the horror show the rest of it had been—not to mention all the shit that followed it.

“I’m just glad that they got the 104th’s commander first.  I don’t think anyone would believe half of the things that Cody or Rex would say.”

“Which would be directly relatable to who they served under, I imagine,” Luke said dryly.

“In Cody’s case?  Absolutely,” Anakin agreed.  “But Rex is also a little bit nuts, so he’s not allowed to blame me for all of it.”

Luke laughed.  “I’ll keep that in mind.  I just—is this weird for you?”  A bit of his son’s bewilderment leaked through, both by expression and in the Force.

“Yes, it is exceptionally weird for me.”  Anakin smiled.  “There’s…oh, wow.  There is so much that I want to tell you, and I have no idea where to begin.”

“The beginning usually works,” Luke suggested.

“The beginning takes several days to get through.”  Anakin ran his right hand through his hair, wincing as several strands caught on his fingers.  Maybe a glove and a new leather vambrace wasn’t a bad idea—he just hadn’t wanted to _bother_.  So he was missing a limb; big fucking deal.  He still had the other three.

Luke was giving him a sympathetic look.  “Is it rude to ask about that?”

“What?  Oh, no.  Not at all,” Anakin said.  “It’s not just the hand, either.”  He pulled his sleeve up past his elbow, revealing the seamed edge that separated flesh from metal.

“I’ve never seen a bionic that complex before.”  Luke’s fingers were reaching out to touch before he recalled himself and pulled back.

“Go ahead, it’s fine,” Anakin said in reassurance.  “It only tickles if I’m trying to clean the joints.”

Luke gave him a searching look, as if trying to figure out which part Anakin was serious about.  Then he traced the lines of gold that gave the black metal its flex, kept it from shattering the first time it hit something that didn’t want to give way.  “It’s beautiful,” he murmured.

“It’s all original work.  The biomechanical replacements available when it happened…”  Anakin paused, trying to figure out if there was a diplomatic way of saying it.  “Well, they sucked.  They were terrible.  Droids had better limbs.  I started tweaking the design, and by the third month of the Clone Wars, I’d gotten most of this built.  Tactile sensation was hard to get translated, and body heat transference was a pain in the ass to manufacture.”

The first finalized version had also been made out of ferromagnetic materials.  Anakin’s encounter with a giant electromagnet had been a lesson he refused to repeat.  He’d swapped out metals like a mad fiend in the short lulls between battles while R2-D2 made fun of him for getting caught like a droid.

“What about synth-flesh?  Why not use that?” Luke asked, his attention caught by the well-hidden seam that masked one of the three energy cells that powered the bionic.  “Neat.”

“We had synth-flesh, yeah, but at that time, there was no means to translate tactile sensation to it.  Synth-flesh existed just to make bionics look acceptable.  I, uh—I invented it,” Anakin said, trying not to feel embarrassed.  “The interface, I mean.  That’s why synth-flesh can perform full neutral translation with bionic limbs.  I’d just finished the mapping that would make it work when…when Order Sixty-Six happened.  It was still on the Temple server, so some enterprising Imperial jackass got ahold of it, slapped their name on my blueprints, and got rich.”

“And then everyone else stole it, too,” Luke said, frowning.  “How did this happen?”

Anakin thought about gilding it, and then decided that would just make things sound worse.  “I ignored my Master, chased after a Dark Jedi on my own during a lightsaber duel, and realized way too late that he’d been holding back, letting me wear myself out so he could…neutralize me.”  Anakin made a face.  Dooku could easily have killed them both that day, and hadn’t, something that had always bothered Anakin because it made no damn sense. 

“Basically, I lost an arm to blatant stupidity.”

“Ah.”  Luke ducked his head, his smile turning wry and self-deprecating.  “I’m familiar with that one.”

“Hey, no way,” Anakin said, and Luke glanced up at him in surprise.  “One:  I’m really sorry that happened to you.  Vader had terrible standards about acceptable losses.  Two:  I wouldn’t consider choosing to go to Bespin an act of blatant stupidity.”

“Why not?”  Luke seemed intrigued, or perhaps nervous.  Anakin had a strong suspicion that Yoda had never had this conversation with his last Padawan.

Anakin chewed at his lower lip for a minute.  “Okay, let’s start at the beginning.  When you decided to go to Bespin, what did Yoda say?”

“That I shouldn’t go,” Luke answered.

 _Figures,_ Anakin thought.  “And what did Obi-Wan say?”

Luke hesitated for a minute.  “Sorry, my first instinct was to say that he told me the same thing, but he didn’t.  He only warned me of the possible consequences—that he wouldn’t be able to help me if something went wrong.”

“Why do you think they did that?”  Luke eyed him, one eyebrow raised, and Anakin spread out his hands.  “Hey, come on, I’m a Jedi Master.  Work with me, here.”

Luke’s eyes brightened.  “Please make sure I’m present when you tell other people that.  I want to see those reactions.”

“No guarantees.  There are a lot of people out there to horrify,” Anakin said, amused by his son’s immediate urge to tease the masses.  “Well?”

Luke’s expression turned sober.  “Yoda believed until he died that I shouldn’t have left.  But Obi-Wan—he never once told me that I shouldn’t have gone to Bespin, never asked me if I regretted the decision afterwards.”

“Obi-Wan was—and is—one hell of a Jedi Master.”  Anakin knew his son wouldn’t refute that.  “He was probably counting on Yoda’s grumbling.  See, there comes a point in every apprenticeship when the student has to figure out for themselves if they’re making the right decisions.  You have to learn to know if you’re doing the right thing by choosing a specific course of action, even if everyone around you is telling you not to do it.  Yoda didn’t think you were at that point in your training.  Obi-Wan knew you’d hit that point right around the time the first Death Star exploded.”

“I understand,” Luke said, but in such a way that Anakin knew he’d be chewing over that for a while.  “Then why do you think that I _wasn’t_ performing blatant acts of stupidity?”

“I didn’t say you never did.”  Anakin grinned.  “Going there in the first place, distracting Vader?  That probably saved your sister’s life, not to mention Chewbacca and the others.  Chasing after Vader when you had the opportunity to vacate?  That was not so smart, and you’ve figured that out already, or you wouldn’t have claimed it to be stupid in the first place.”

“Vader.”  Luke seemed to be bracing himself.  “How much of him is…still here?”

“Oh, probably more than I’m comfortable with.”  Anakin couldn’t blame him for the question.  The surprise was that Luke had waited this long to ask it.  “There are large chunks of things that I don’t remember, but there are still—there are still terrible things that I _do_ recall.”

“The things that you do remember.”  Luke pressed his lips together, swallowing.  “Sometimes I dream of what _could be_ , for me, as well as what _was,_ for you.  I just—how do you live with any of it?”

Anakin tilted his head, considering the vast spread of horror that composed Vader’s memories.  They still felt distant to him, but that didn’t change the nature of what they were.  “I spend a lot of time convincing myself that it won’t actually fix anything if I swallow my own lightsaber.”

Luke didn’t say anything in response; he hugged Anakin instead, which he wasn’t prepared for.  It took Anakin a moment to hug him back, feeling eased by the love he could sense, the determination Luke held to be a reminder that suicide by plasma to the skull was not actually necessary.

Anakin had been panicking about meeting his children for two years.  It was good to know that in Luke’s case, the panic had been pointless.

Leia, however, was a different story entirely.  He still wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that his Noghri spy had reported that the Petitioner’s Gift was accepted.

 

*          *          *          *

 

Obi-Wan woke up later feeling at least somewhat better.  He was also in a bed instead of lying on the floor; yet another improvement.  If his vital signs were being monitored, someone had been kind enough to turn off the accursed beeping sounds from the machine.

Given the lack of bacta scent and taste, he’d been out for several hours.  He didn’t sense Rex, Cody, Mara, Luke, or Anakin nearby, but he was still in the presence of someone familiar.

“How the hell are you still alive?”

Obi-Wan felt his heart jolt uncomfortably in his chest.  He turned his head to the right and discovered that no, he had not been mistaken.

Kix was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at a datapad in what looked like abject disbelief.  “What the hell—what the shit is that scarring—what the kriffing _hells_ happened to your neurochem profile?”

Obi-Wan stared at the man, jaw clenched tight against any conceivable answer.  Kix looked almost exactly the same as he had decades before—even the patterning on his armor was the same.  No; that was a coat, not armor.  It was pale blue, with the familiar patterns of his old military armor replicated in darker, proper 501st blue.

Obi-Wan was used to talking to dead people, yes, but they were not normally so solid, loud, or….or not-Jedi.  Qui-Gon had probably left him with some very inappropriate ideas about what it meant to talk to the dead, anyway.

“Kix!”

Obi-Wan shifted his gaze to the other man coming into the room.  He was an older clone around Rex’s age, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in at least a week.  This man wore the dark green and black-edged uniform that had been used by the Alliance army about a decade ago, before styles veered even further away from Republic or Imperial standards.

Kix glanced up from the datapad.  “What?”

“I know it hasn’t been that long for you, but you could at least pretend that twenty-six years in cryo taught you some fucking manners.”

“Manners?” Kix repeated blankly.

The man dressing Kix down turned his head enough for Obi-Wan to catch sight of the fading edges of what had once been a far more complete tattoo—a Republic military cog.  “Did you say _hello_ to the man before you scared the hell out of him?”

Kix blinked a few times and glanced down at Obi-Wan.  “Oh, right.  Hi, General!”

“The fuck,” Obi-Wan whispered, wide-eyed.  Kix and Jesse.  Force, was he hallucinating?  Having a bad reaction to the tarroffinial? 

He couldn’t—this wasn’t—Obi-Wan drew in an unsteady breath.  “What—what fucking _year_ is it?”

“Oh, you have that problem too, huh?” Kix waved the datapad around while Jesse sighed and looked at the ceiling.  “It’s 5239.”

“Great.  What the hell?” Obi-Wan asked in a high-pitched voice.  This was actually worse than waking up to a panic attack!

“Short version or long version?” Kix asked.

“I don’t care, as long as the answer makes _sense,_ ” Obi-Wan retorted.

“Hey, y’know, you’re also supposed to be dead,” Jesse pointed out.  “I’m not sure you get to demand sensible explanations, since nobody has one for why _you_ are magically not-dead.  Not to mention the fact that you’re just as young as Kix, here.”

“No, they had one, Tano just says it takes two days, and nobody liked the short version,” Kix said.  “Also, I’m pretty sure the General here is actually _younger_ than I am right now.”

“How the fuck does that even,” Jesse said in bafflement.  “You know what—fuck it, I don’t care.  Everything is weird, anyway.”

Obi-Wan felt himself smile.  If this was a hallucination, at least it was a nice one.  “Fine.  I’ll take the short version.”

Kix pointed at himself.  “Separatist assholes and twenty-six years trapped in a freezer.”

Jesse smirked when Kix pointed at him.  “Did not actually suicide via mating destroyers.”

“Which nobody knew until, oh, yesterday,” Kix added, giving Jesse a narrow-eyed glare.

“No fucking communications!” Jesse protested.  “Besides, people would have known twenty-six years ago if certain Jedi Generals hadn’t missed an escape pod.”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, chest aching again, but for an entirely different reason.  “Ah.  That was sort of my fault.  I’m sorry.”

“Stop making my patient feel guilty!” Kix ordered Jesse. 

 _“MY_ PATIENT!” the Gand roared from somewhere further down in the bowels of the med-bay.

“MINE FIRST BY TWENTY-NINE FUCKING YEARS!” Kix yelled back.  “AND I OUTRANK YOU, ASSHOLE!”

“Guilt?” Jesse asked, ignoring the medical territory war.

“Right around the time of the second _Redeemer’s_ impact, we had a viper droid attempt to join us on the bridge.”  Obi-Wan looked over to find Cody standing in the open doorway, leaning against the bulkhead frame.  “Not a stealth-job, but full impact.  Our genius General there—”

“You’re _welcome,_ ” Obi-Wan grumbled.

“—kept us from getting sucked out into space until the e-bulkheads for the viewports slammed shut, but we still had a live viper on the bridge.”  Cody shook his head.  “Two-and-a-half years of war, and some assholes still hadn’t learned how to duck.”

Kix flinched and Jesse closed one eye, like he expected an explosion.  Obi-Wan just gave Cody a pair of innocently raised eyebrows.  “Can’t fucking aim a cannon.”

Cody grinned.  “Fuck you, too.”

Jesse opened his mouth, one finger raised in query, and then apparently gave it up as a lost cause.  “I don’t even want to know.”

 _“I_ know, and Boil is probably not gonna take that joke well,” Kix said to Cody.  “Might be something to keep in mind.”

Cody shrugged.  “One way or another, someone’s getting punched.  I might as well make it worthwhile.”

Kix sighed.  “Just—will you not—I give up.”

Jesse gave Kix a concerned look, and then pushed the conversation along.  “Okay, a viper on one bridge; what about General Skywalker?”

“Internal fires and aethersprites don’t mix,” Cody answered dryly.  “It wasn’t a fun day for anyone, really.  You got a moment, Kix?”

“Well, I really want him to tell me why these medical scans make _no kriffing sense at all_ , but sure,” Kix said, reattaching the datapad to the end of the bio-bed.  “What is it, sir?”

Cody’s expression twisted into extreme displeasure.  “To begin with, stop calling me sir.”

Kix looked offended.  “You still outrank me!”

“Don’t give a fuck,” Cody replied.  “Knock it off.  Besides, Jesse doesn’t have a problem with it.”

Jesse snorted.  “I’ve been out of touch for a decade, and also, you don’t actually outrank me.  Some idiot made me a general a few months before we got stuck out in the boonies of space.”

Cody grinned at Jesse, eerily reminiscent of a land shark.  “I don’t outrank you, huh?”

“Generally, yes—that pun was _not_ on purpose, by the way.”  Jesse’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.  “Why do I not outrank you?”

Obi-Wan started laughing as realization set in.  “Oh, dear gods, did you really?”

Cody kept smiling.  “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I am missing a—” Kix halted in appalled disbelief.  “I can’t believe you did that.  That’s terrible.  If there was a pun war, you just won it.”

“That’s _hilarious!_ ” Obi-Wan countered, hands pressed to his chest as he tried not to wheeze from laughing too hard.

“Some asshole in logistics insisted I had to have two names when I officially joined up with the Alliance,” Cody said to Jesse, familiar smirk on his face.  “I told him he was being Imperialist and speciesist; he retorted that I didn’t get paperwork finished unless I gave him a second name.  Thus:  Al’verde Naasade.”

Jesse face-palmed, shaking his head.  “Commander Nobody.  General, I blame you for that.”

“I want a copy of that document,” Obi-Wan gasped out, trying not to dissolve into hysterical giggling.  “I want a framed fucking copy!”

“Sure.  That’s probably the easiest thing anyone’s asked of me in years.”  Cody turned his attention back to Kix.  “Your squad has gotten themselves into trouble.”

Kix’s face lost all traces of humor.  “Usually we’re causing it, not getting caught by it.”

Cody’s eyes flashed in sudden anger.  “Bad intel.  Place they hit was supposed to be a low-personnel station, and it turns out they found one of the larger troop barracks this side of the Drift.”

“We’re going to assist, right?” Jesse asked, straightening up from a partial slouch and coming to full attention.

“Command’s not happy about it, but Command can go chew on a rat’s asshole and cope,” Cody said, which made Jesse smile and Kix look almost manic with glee.  “How’s your team for travel, Jesse?”

Jesse considered it and then tilted his hand back and forth.  “So-so.  I’m not gonna make it mandatory, not after ten years in the boonies and not a lot of Imps to practice on.”

Cody nodded and then glared at Obi-Wan, who just sighed and rolled his eyes.  “Yes, Cody, I am very much aware of the fact that I’m not going.  Please be careful, and come back with….with…you know, I’m almost afraid to ask who you’ll be returning with.”

Kix grinned.  “Eel, Numan’arru, Boil, Click, Lichen, Pulsar, Echo, and Slick.”

Obi-Wan stared at him.  “Echo.”

“Uh huh,” Kix confirmed, his grin getting wider.

“Ah,” Obi-Wan said, and decided that he was just going to give up on things making sense for a while.  It seemed the wisest course of action, given that he was also one of the things that didn’t make sense.

“We’ll be back soon.  The _Tatius_ will be dropping out of hyperspace in about ten,” Cody said.  Kix hopped up and scrambled to follow Cody, and Jesse fell in behind him.

Obi-Wan smiled.  “Hey, Jesse?”

Jesse half-turned to glance back at him.  “Yes, sir?”

“Oh, don’t start,” Obi-Wan grumbled, and Jesse grinned.  “Give Eel a message for me, would you please?”

“Sure,” Jesse agreed.  “What’s the message?”

“‘Fancy _stick?_ ’”

Jesse raised an eyebrow.  “Exactly that tone of voice?”

“Exactly that,” Obi-Wan said.  “Have fun, General.”

Jesse’s face scrunched up.  “Okay, now _that_ was weird.  Be good, Your Jedi-ship, sir.”

“Jesse!” Cody shouted.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” Jesse yelled back.

The tarroffinial must have still been lurking in his system; Obi-Wan slipped under without realizing it and awoke again to a gloved hand stroking his hair.  He opened his eyes to find Rex in full _beskar’gam_ , sans helmet, watching him with a soft, melancholy smile on his weathered face.

“Oh, this is a much better way to wake up than potential hallucinations,” Obi-Wan murmured, releasing a sigh that sounded far more like a purr.  “Going out with the others?”  Rex nodded; perhaps not a set of hallucinations, then.

“Weren’t you stabbed recently?”

Rex lifted one shoulder, still regarding him with that same wistful expression.  “Stabbing is a hell of a lot easier to get over than…well.  Between the two of us, Kenobi, you always did excel at winding up in worse shape.”

“Point,” Obi-Wan admitted, lulled by the hair-petting.  “You look…are you all right?”

“I was just thinking about Tarabba,” Rex said.  “Reversed circumstances, and you’re not dying, but I just—I thought maybe that was it, you know.  Loaded on a transport like that, with a strapped Jedi General trying to put my insides back together when he was barely keeping himself in one piece, it just didn’t seem like the best way to leave.  We got to say goodbye, even if the words…”

Obi-Wan swallowed down a sudden lump in his throat.  “Didn’t have to.”  They hadn’t needed words, not at that point.

“Yeah.”  Rex blew out a long sigh.  “We both lived, and it didn’t make a fucking bit of difference.”

“Rex.”  Obi-Wan lifted his hand, fumbling around until the tingling fingers of his left hand registered contact.  He gripped Rex’s vambrace, his thumb resting over the faded gold of the Jedi Order’s symbol.  “I know what I said, about what I expected…but right now?  I think this is a prime example of the future always being in motion.”

Rex snorted out a laugh.  “Yeah.  Guess so.  You, uh…you don’t go anywhere, all right?”

“No, of course I—”

 _I_ am _coming back._

Oh, gods.  Obi-Wan blinked back sudden tears.  He’d broken that vow to Qui-Gon and Rillian, even if he hadn’t meant to.

He _refused_ to break this one.  “Rex.  I promise; I will still be here when you return.”

The vow chased some of the sadness from Rex’s eyes.  He bent down and touched his lips to Obi-Wan’s, a gentle kiss that was also a request.  Obi-Wan smiled and allowed it to become a deeper kiss, warm and pliant comfort.

“Aw, gods, not again!” Anakin shouted.

Obi-Wan and Rex both started laughing, Rex pressing their foreheads together.  “Your timing is your own bloody fault,” Obi-Wan said, between undignified giggles.

“I am fine with the thing and the sort-of relationship, but why do I have to keep catching you guys doing the thing!” Anakin whined.  “I’m going to find Cody, who I can trust will _not_ be randomly kissing people on board this ship.”

Obi-Wan waited until Anakin left.  “If I thought Cody would go for it, I would _pay_ him to kiss people in places where Anakin could catch him at it.”

Rex smiled.  “Could always have Kix and Jesse do it.”

“Rex, the entirety of the 501st and the 212th were used to finding Kix and Jesse doing odd things in _odd places_ within three weeks of Christophsis,” Obi-Wan replied, but then he smiled, too.  “Force.  Kix and Jesse.”

Rex nodded, his eyes shining.  “Echo.”

Obi-Wan used his right hand to squeeze Rex’s gloved fingers.  “Bring our people home, Captain.”

Rex bent down long enough to kiss him again.  “You got it, General.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

Eel peered around the corner, wishing his little pocket mirror hadn’t been destroyed by an Imp with a good eye about three planets back.  The corridor was empty, but a surveillance camera was mounted up on the wall.

“I need a blind spot, Pulsar.”

“Five seconds,” Pulsar returned, sounding clipped and harried.  “I can get you about a minute of static before the Imps will notice.  We’ve got military activity outside, so if you find Kix, you need to move your asses the hell out of there immediately.”

“Understood.”  Eel glanced down at Lichen, who was covering his back.  “You heard all that?”

“Heard it.  Let’s go get our baby brother and get out of this dump,” Lichen replied.  “This place makes me nervous.”

“Same.”  Eel bolted out of cover the moment Pulsar sent a clicked confirm on their static window, Lichen at his heels but facing the opposite direction.  “Only one cell’s occupied.  Let’s hope it’s him.”

Cell 00-66-271 was indeed occupied when Eel opened the door, but not by Kix.  Eel was about to give vent to some serious, frustrated swearing, when he realized who did reside in the cell.  “Motherfucking gods—Winter?”

Winter was already standing up from a hard-edged prison bunk.  “Commodore, why are you here?” she demanded.  “You’re not supposed to be my extraction team!”

“Who’s that?” Lichen asked, once they were back into cover as the static window closed.

“Lichen, this is Winter of the House Organa, adopted sister of Leia Organa, also known as Targeter, also known as a badass,” Eel introduced them.

“Ma’am,” Lichen said, grinning.  “Nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s mine, Captain,” she said, which had Lichen blinking up at her again in surprise.

“The lady never forgets,” Eel quipped.  He tossed Winter his spare blaster.  “Only two clips left.  We’re starting to run dry.”

“Understood.”  Winter checked the charge before flicking the safety off, keeping her finger in place over the trigger guard but prepared to fire.  “The last contact I had with High Command, it was Page’s Commandos who were meant to be my extraction from the facility.”

“Yeaaaah.”  Eel grimaced and let Lichen take point, keeping Winter between them as they booked it the hell out of the detention facility.  “We were _their_ extraction team, Winter.  They had to pull out when they found a bad nest about three systems away.”

“Gods.  How bad?” Winter asked, and then waited in silence as Lichen motioned to indicate a patrol was crossing their path.

Once the area was clear, Eel said, “Page and half of his team are on a medical frigate, dipped in bacta.  He’s got two confirmed casualties, and one that might be in Imperial custody…along with one of ours.”

“I’m sorry.  I suppose that’s what you’ve been doing—searching for captured agents?”

“Yeah.”  Eel scowled.  “Page didn’t tell us we should have been on the lookout for you, too, the reticent shit.  What the hell are you even doing in this sector of space?” Eel asked, just before he slammed the butt of his blaster rifle into some poor damned Imperial officer’s face when the man rounded the corner at an inconvenient time.

“Discovering a very large Imperial nest,” Winter replied dryly.  “One that you and Captain Lichen here are right in the middle of.”

“How big a nest are we talking?” Lichen asked, opening the outer doors.

Eel lowered his rifle in outright shock.  “Fuck _me._ ”

“I’d rather not; Hahna would murder me in my sleep,” Winter murmured, shoving them both off to the side of the base and towards cover when they were a hair too slow.

Eel glanced around his chosen tree, thick enough that it would stop everything shy of a turbolaser blast.  There was an actual fucking _war_ going on outside.  “Guess the rest of Lylek Squad found the party.”

“Give me personnel information, Commodore,” Winter ordered.

“Lylek’s full squad, minus our CMO,” Eel reported.  “Lieutenant Colonel Slick, Major Echo, Lieutenant Commander Pulsar, Captain Click, Colonel Boil, and Lieutenant Colonel Numan’arru, along with our charming faces.”

“It’s just your team?” Winter asked, before looking back at the fray in disbelief.  “Wait, is that Major Echo?”

Eel took another glance just in time to see Echo pretty much obliterate everything in his path before he was obscured by more stormtroopers.  “Yep, that was him.  Hold on,” he instructed, and tapped his comm.  “Pulsar, what the fuck is going on?”

“We found a fucking lot of Imps,” Pulsar retorted.

“No fucking shit!”  Eel rolled his eyes.  “We can see that we’ve found a fucking lot of Imps.  Why is Echo taking them on like he’s lost his damned mind?”

“Oh, that.”

Eel waited a minute.  “Well?”

“Slick’s down.  Not dead,” Pulsar assured him, before Eel could say anything.  Didn’t stop his heart from double-timing for a moment, though.  Fuck, he just did not want to deal with any more dead brothers, even if Slick was an asshole. 

“What the hell happened?” Lichen asked, while Eel was still recovering from his miniature heart attack.

“Stepped on a detonator with that heavy-ass bionic foot of his to keep Numa, Boil, and Echo from becoming vapor.”

“For fuck’s sake.”  Eel wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand.  “Echo’s going to kill everything here or die trying.”

“Pretty much.  I got word out to a nearby Alliance ship, but I don’t have an ETA on reinforcements.”

“Fuck.  Fucking fuck.  Where’s Click?”

“On the ground.  Our ship needs some work before she’s spaceworthy again, by the way,” Pulsar told him.  “I lost eyes on him—oh, hey.  There’s a transport coming in, and it’s not an Imp boat.  Go keep Echo and his dumb ass alive for a while, and we should be good.”

“Got it.”  Eel looked at the others.  “Winter, ma’am, you don’t have armor, so you’re staying in cover and going for distance shots.  Give me that blaster,” he said, and traded her the rifle for his original pistol.  “Lichen, gimme your spare.”  Lichen gave him an amused look and handed over his blaster pistol.

“Fucking 501st,” Lichen grumbled.  “We’re just going to wade out there shooting at things, aren’t we?”

“Sure are.”  Eel grinned at him.  “You could always stay here.”

Lichen shook his head.  “Someone has to cover your ass.”

“Keep yourselves alive, gentlemen,” Winter requested, settling in with the rifle so that she could blend in with the bush.  “I don’t like filling out that sort of paperwork.”

“Ma’am,” Eel replied, and then launched himself out from cover, blasters both firing.  He’d learned from the fucking best, and every shot he made hit what he was aiming at.  Lichen was right beside him, his brother’s face screwed up in a frown of intense concentration as he pretended to ignore the fact that they were now in a damned hail of blaster fire.

“Hi, Echo!” Eel called.  “Want some help?”

“YOU ARE FUCKING GODSDAMNED RIGHT I WANT HELP!” Echo roared back, and used his bionic arm to punch in a stormtrooper’s visor.

“Gotcha,” Eel said, trying not to wince as that very dead trooper hit the ground.  “Lichen!  Triad!”

“On it,” Lichen replied.  They set up in a triangle grouping to keep each other’s backs clear while also mowing down everything Imperial that came in their direction.

“Where are the others?” Eel shouted over the racket.

“Don’t know!”  Echo punched another stormtrooper and then stole his rifle.  “Numa stayed with my idiot fucking boyfriend, but I lost Boil along the way when these assholes started swarming out!”

“Lost-lost, or just—” Lichen started to ask, but Echo interrupted him.

“He had a hole, he was fine!”

Eel grinned.  “I get to make jokes about how Boil is always fine if he’s got a hole to put himself in, right?”

“AFTER we kill everyone!” Echo snarled.

“Shit!  Cover me!” Eel yelled, crouching down to haul a stormtrooper closer.  “You’d better have a fucking spare charge along with that rifle, you kriffing piece of shit!” he told the dead man.  To Eel’s relief, there were three, plus whatever charge was left in the asshole’s rifle.

Eel slapped a fresh charge home in his blaster and looked up to find an Imperial rifle pointed right at his face.  “Aw, fuck,” he muttered, and ducked his head, hoping like hell that the cloth-armored hats worked for repelling headshots at extremely close range.  Echo insisted they did, but Echo was also fucking nuts.

“Die, Rebel—” The stormtrooper went flying sideways with a smoking hole in the side of his armor.  Eel looked up, both pistols raised, and found a Mandalorian in black-and-blue armor standing at the ready, one of his two blasters still smoking.

“Oh, hey, and now we have Mandalorians.”  Eel snapped off a shot to take out an officer going for Lichen’s right flank.  “I hope you’re the type that hate Imperials more than you hate the Alliance.”

“Well, I _am_ Alliance, so it’s your lucky fucking day,” Eel’s savior said, and Eel almost stopped killing Imperials in surprise.

Echo turned his head to stare at their new friend, which made Eel realize that Echo was also busy strangling the life out of an olive-clad officer that had gotten too close.  “REX?”

“Hello, assholes!” Rex greeted them cheerfully.  “Want a rescue?”

“I will blow you for a rescue,” Eel replied in utter sincerity.

“Man, Winter won’t have to worry about Hahna killing her—she’s going to kill _you_ , instead,” Lichen observed.  “Hello, Commander!”

“Not a commander anymore, Captain Lichen,” Rex said.  Eel could hear the smile in the man’s voice, and it warmed his aging heart.  “I brought friends.  Don’t shoot any of them, please.”

“Friends?  Who are we—” Eel watched as another Mandalorian in 104th gray tore hell though the battlefield in a jetpack, clearing a path.  There was a damned distinctive mark on the shoulder plate of his armor.  “Oh.  Hi there, Wolffe!”

“Hello!”  Wolffe started laying down suppressing fire that gave Eel, Echo, and Lichen a chance to fucking breathe.  “How the hell have you been?”

“Not bad!” Echo replied, and swung his bionic arm out in a wide arc that slammed one stormtrooper into the man next to him, dropping them both with cracked armor and muffled groans of pain.  “You?”

“Having a pretty decent year!” Wolffe yelled back, slamming his head down onto a stormtrooper’s face.  Imperial armor had no hope of withstanding a hit from a _beskar’gam_ bucket.

“I’m so glad I wasn’t 501st,” Lichen gasped out.  “You’re still acting like this shit is normal!”

“It totally is,” Eel said.  “Stop whining and help me steal charges!”

Rex and Wolffe provided cover for their weapons-scrounging.  With the arrival of additional firepower, Eel was finally able to take note of Winter choosing her targets.  Multiple stormtroopers were going down with flaming holes where their visors used to be.

“Who’s that?” Rex asked, turning the triad into a quad group for better defensive coverage.  Wolffe took to the air again to cover them topside.

“That’s a friendly we found imprisoned in the base.  Not who we were looking for, but Winter’s good people,” Eel explained.

Rex paused, bucket helm turning to regard him in what Eel was pretty sure was disbelief.  “You found Targeter?  Damn, good job.”

“Why does everyone know Targeter’s retrieval was an active mission except us?” Echo asked in a growl.  “You sure there wasn’t anyone else in that base, Eel?”

“Nobody but Imps.”

“Good.”  Echo’s smile got wide and nasty.  “Because I’m going to obliterate the fucking thing.”

Eel couldn’t blame Echo for that bit of oncoming retribution.  He glanced at Rex.  “You seem awfully not-surprised that Echo isn’t dead.  I know your cell has been way the fuck out of contact.”

“Yeah, we were,” Rex agreed, then made an amused sound as Wolffe flung a thermal detonator into a crowd of Imps and sent white armor flying.  “But it’s been a weird week.  Got your missing team member, by the way.”

“Kix?” Eel gasped in disbelief, just in time for the teammate in question to clear a path to their position with another aging brother at his back.

“Hi, Eel!  Miss me?” Kix asked, a wide grin on his face.

“YOU MOTHERFUCKER!” Eel yelled, kind of horrified by the fact that he was on the verge of tears.  “You are not allowed to disappear your ass again, not on my watch!”

“Disappear—I was fucking captured!” Kix retorted, raising his rifle long enough to shoot three Imps in succession.

“Kix, there was nothing fucking there when we got back,” Echo said without ceasing fire.  “Literally. Fucking. Nothing.  No bodies from either side.  It was like we’d all hallucinated you, and it wasn’t a nice feeling.”

“Shit.”  Kix sighed.  “Someone’s going to have to tell Page that one of his people is dead, then.  Imperial execution.”

“Already down with an injury?” Kix’s shadow asked in a gruff voice.  He was facing away from them, doing his job at guarding Kix’s back, so Eel wasn’t getting details on his face that might help trigger identification.

“Yeah,” Kix replied, his eyes going hard.

“Still no changes for stormtrooper SOP, then.”

Eel finally caught on, recognizing the voice he was hearing.  “Well, fuck me sideways,” he said, grinning.  “Nice to see you’re not actually dead, Cody!”

Cody peered over his shoulder to smile at Eel.  “Lots of that going around lately, Eel.  How the fuck are you?”

“Feeling a hell of a lot more confident about living through the day,” Eel replied, and then winced as the distinctive, deep-bass thump of an AT-AT’s foot caught his attention.  “Little less confident now.”

“Relax, we’ve got people on it,” Wolffe said.  “No need to wet your pants over one AT-AT.”

“Y’know, I actually managed to forget that you are a _complete prick_ ,” Eel retorted, and kept firing as the AT-AT advanced.  It wasn’t shooting at them yet, but its massive head was turning about, getting a bead on their position.  “I would very much like for your people to make that thing go away now.”

“Timing is everything,” Rex replied, which made no sense until three beams of light erupted into view on top of the walker.  Eel looked up to see one dead Jedi Commander, twin white lightsabers blazing as she carved a hole through the top of the AT-AT, while another dead Jedi General covered her, deflecting blasts with his familiar pale blue blade.

“Okay, so I would just like to announce that I’m hallucinating dead Jedi,” Eel said.

Rex snorted.  “Trust me, we’ve been trying to cope with that feeling for days.”

“Totally legit,” Kix confirmed.  “Weird, but legit.”

“I knew Tano was alive,” Lichen said in a mild voice.  “She was one of my early contacts in the Alliance.”

Eel almost punched his teammate.  “Why the hell didn’t you ever tell _me_ that?”

“Because of the same isolationist bullshit that Slick keeps bitching about?” Lichen ventured, taking out a squad of stormtroopers trying to climb up their six.  “And I hadn’t seen her in a few years, so I didn’t have a confirm on living or dead, anyway.”

“Fair enough.”  Eel watched the walker collapse to its knees as the Jedi inside killed off the crew.  His heart was in his throat for a second as a fireball went up, but when the air cleared, there were still two amazingly _not dead_ Jedi on the battlefield.  “Fuck, I need a drink.”

“Hi, guys!  Want a hand?” Anakin Skywalker asked as he wandered over, idly deflecting blaster bolts.  Ahsoka Tano was doing the same, but she shook her head at Skywalker’s blithe tone.

“So, basically, nobody is staying dead today,” Lichen said.

Echo snorted.  “Much more interesting when people show up alive, anyway.”

Kix and Cody glanced at each other.  “Now’s probably a bad time to mention the others.”

“What.”  Eel stared at Kix.  His brother had just come back from the dead, _again_ , and this time he’d brought _more dead people_ with him.  “Just…I do not even know how to respond to that.  At all.”

Echo’s attention had gone back to the base.  “You know, I don’t care if you’re walking, talking zombies, but if that offer of assistance is legit?  I’d love some help decimating this place.”

“Done,” Skywalker said, grinning. “You look good, Echo!”

Echo just scowled at him.  “I’m bitching about you and Kix and your shiny immortality later.”

“Freezer!” Kix snapped.  “Remember?”

Skywalker just shrugged.  “Later is good.  Also, not nearly as shiny as you think.”

Rex, Cody, and Wolffe looked at each other, conferring in that silent way command staff in the old GAR had always developed after a month or two in the field.  “We’ll stay out here and cover you,” Cody said.  “Have fun, kids.”

Taking apart the base actually was kind of fun.  It was weird and odd and so fucking _satisfying_ to have Jedi in the mix again, especially these two particular Jedi.

Watching Echo tear hell through the ranks was also great visual therapy, especially given the expression on Lichen’s face.  “How the fuck did you guys survive three years in the GAR?” Lichen asked plaintively.

“Turns out it really does help to be completely insane,” Skywalker told Lichen, smiling.  He gave Lichen’s shoulder a swift pat before he darted back into the mess to bisect stormtroopers.

 

*          *          *          *

 

“Shit!  Incoming!” Boil yelled.

The warning came just as something small and black landed next to Slick.  Thermal detonator. 

Everything about that type of detonator flashed into his head, blast range and type of explosion and minimum safe distance.  He had a lot of stupid ideas, but when it came to a choice between himself or his brothers, brothers always came first. 

Slick slammed his bionic foot down on the thermal detonator, hoping the dense construction would be enough to help compress the blast wave.  Even if he died, it would keep the others alive.

His brain skipped out on the actual explosion.  Slick opened his eyes to bright sky overhead.  His ears were filled with fucking bells, and he didn’t feel anything.  Explosions were usually more painful than that.

He kept blinking in and out of consciousness, semi-aware that someone was hauling him back from their pathetic front line.  Splitting the squad in half had seemed like a good idea, but that was before Imps had swarmed out of a base that was only supposed to have about a quarter that amount of stormtroopers.

“I swear if you die, I will put myself out of commission for five minutes just to find you in the afterlife and beat you to death!”

“That’s a stupid idea,” Slick muttered at Echo, gripping at Echo’s jacket just to try and keep himself upright.

“SO IS STOMPING ON A THERMAL DETONATOR!” Echo yelled back.

“Can we get him out?”

“Not with fire this thick, Numa,” Boil answered.  Slick frowned, trying his best to stay awake for more than a few seconds at a time.  It would help if something actually hurt; pain was good for adrenaline and that shit would wake you up in a hurry.

“Hey, reinforcements!”

“Since when do _we_ get reinforcements?” Boil asked Numa.

“Who the fuck cares?” Echo yelled.  “The minute they lay down suppressing fire, I’m going out there and I’m killing every single Imp I can find!”

The next time Slick managed to pry his eyes open, he was propped upright against a tree, and Jesse was squatting next to him, a rifle in his hands that was spitting out green fire.  “Man, your boyfriend does _not_ handle stress well.”

Slick stared at the man.  He was pretty sure about Jesse’s identity, even with part of the tattoo missing.  He was old enough, which was...wait, no, that wasn’t right.  “Am I fucking dead?”

Jesse stopped firing and gave him an odd look.  “Y’know, if I was actually dead, I’d like to think I’d be smart and not stick with being old, especially since my boyfriend is still hot.”

Slick tried to shift in place—okay, there was the pain, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck all of that.  He was awake now, and he was an idiot.  “You actually _are_ supposed to be dead, asshole!”

Jesse shrugged.  “Yeah, hearing that a lot lately.  Why the hell would you think I’d be the one to come collect your dead ass if you’d actually bought it?”

“So many 501st brothers have decided to turn up not-dead, I thought maybe there weren’t enough familiar faces left to choose from.”  Slick steeled himself and glanced down at his legs.  Bionic combined with the body armor had actually done a decent job of saving his ass.  His left leg was intact, if blackened and possibly broken.  His right leg was a bandaged, bloodied mess below the knee, which meant he’d lost more of his leg along with the antique bionic.  Shit. 

Jesse grinned at him.  “Aw, you missed me!”

“No, I didn’t.  Where did you find Kix?” Slick asked, scowling as he realized no one had left him a fucking weapon.  Maybe they were worried he was going to shoot his personal guard.

“It was kind of a mutual find?”  Jesse lifted the rifle and nailed a pair of stormtroopers that wandered too close.  Fucking hells, they had full-on battlefield chaos happening.

“My team was going to infiltrate an Imperial base, all prepared to fight our way in, but Kix had already fucking killed everything inside.  Not only did I get an easy mission, I got my boyfriend back.  Win-win.”

Slick blinked a few times, trying to make sure he’d heard that right.  “Kix.  Killed everything inside an Imperial base.”

Jesse smiled.  “Yeah.  Totally hot.”

_“How?”_

“Fire suppression system,” Jesse said.  “Genius.”

“My team’s medic is terrifying.  Fabulous,” Slick muttered, pleased.  “What the fuck are you doing here, then?”

Jesse gave him a patient look.  “Well, Kix wanted to make sure none of you fucking died, especially since you decided to piss off every Imperial in the entire sector.”

“We were looking for his magically disappearing ass!” Slick retorted, then gritted his teeth at the white-hot flare of agony that climbed into his hips.  Right; he’d forgotten that it really fucking hurt to lose a limb.  “And you two idiots came into this mess by yourselves?”

Jesse snorted.  “No, jackass.  We brought friends.”

Adrenaline failed him; Slick woke up again when he heard Boil and Numa.  They were standing a few paces away, staring at something in the distance.  Numa appeared to be unharmed, but Boil’s armor was char-blackened from shoulder to boots.

“Guess we’re not retreating,” Boil said, his back still turned.

“Echo does make a convincing case,” Numa agreed.

“Hey,” Slick croaked, trying to pretend he wasn’t immediately freaked out by the fact that Jesse was gone.

His squadmates turned around at once.  Numa’s face, neck, and _lekku_ were burnt, but it was more like a bad sunburn.  Boil was missing part of his mustache on the right side. 

“Hey.  You all right?” Boil asked.

Slick rolled his eyes.  “If I’m talking to you, I’ll live.”

“Not what I asked,” Boil retorted.

“Fine.  It hurts like fuck,” Slick growled.  “Is everyone else—”

“They’re okay.  Echo didn’t get hit at all, my face will heal, and Boil’s magnificently coifed facial hair will grow back,” Numa reported brightly.

Boil glared at her.  “Hey!”

Jesse turned out not to be a pain-fueled hallucination when he came jogging back, a smear of mud decorating the other side of his face.  “Fucking ARCs, man.”

“His assistants are not exactly holding him back,” Numa said.  “Also, it is reported that you _are_ an ARC, so you have no right to complain.”

“Wouldn’t work, he’d just go through them,” Jesse replied.  “And I can pretend not to be an ARC all I want, it lasted for a whole three months.  How’re you holding up?” he asked Slick.

“Fine,” Slick admitted tersely.  He wasn’t, but he wasn’t dying, so who gave a shit?  “Who’s helping Echo kill everything?”

Boil and Jesse looked at each other.  “Well—” Boil began.

“Kix says you’re not allowed to punch anyone.  Medic’s orders,” Jesse interrupted.

It only took a second to realize what that meant.  “SON OF A BITCH!”

“Pretty sure Dad Fett was a guy,” Jesse said, grinning.  “Seriously.  No punching.”

“Then give me a fucking gun!”

Jesse shook his head.  “Yeah, that would be a great idea, except for the part where it’s not.”

“Did you miss the part where they’re helping us?” Numa asked him dryly.

“Then stand me the hell up so I can punch him!” Slick ordered.

Boil winced, shutting both eyes.  “Them.”

Slick stared at Boil, forgetting that his leg was aching and still bleeding.  “You are fucking kidding me.”

“Nope.”  Jesse glanced at Boil in a way that was both amused and disapproving.  “Boil punched Cody.”

“He never told me he was _not dead!_ ” Boil yelled furiously.  “You fucking tell people when you are _not dead_.”

Jesse slapped his hand over his forehead.  “Seriously, we’ve been over this.  Stranded for ten years.  No communications.”

“You had sixteen years before that, you stupid prick!”

“I didn’t know you were alive, either!” Jesse yelled back, finally starting to look angry.  “Fuck the hell off and go yell at Cody some more!”

“FINE!” Boil stomped off in the direction that blaster fire sounds were coming from.

Slick waved to recapture Numa’s attention.  “Numa, please help me stand up.  If I don’t get to punch anyone, then at least let me witness someone else doing it.”

Numa snickered; she and Jesse got Slick on his feet, which almost caused him to black out again.  Slick bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood until the spots went away.  He’d still blanked on at least a minute, because his arm was slung over Numa’s shoulders and Jesse was walking point ahead of them, rifle up and alert for trouble.

“Is this a kink, this punching thing?  It had better not be a kink; I will drop you for forcing me to be involved,” Numa warned him.

“Not a kink.”  Slick grinned.  “Haven’t you ever wanted to punch your commanding officer?”

“Yes,” Numa replied.  “I’ve wanted to punch you many times—oh!”  Realization was dawning in her eyes.  “I see.”

“You’ve already been in one fist-fight with Rex _and_ Cody,” Jesse said to him without turning around.  “That should probably be enough.”

“Why?  The first one was fun,” Slick countered, and Numa made a noise that had to have been a choked-off giggle.

It was a long damned line of carnage to follow.  Slick glanced at prone stormtroopers as Numa helped him hobble along.  “Okay, what else are you fuckers not telling me?”

“Well, you never met Commander Tano, so I didn’t want to rub salt in your wounds,” Jesse said.

“Fuck you,” Slick muttered.  He hoped like hell that Kix didn’t pull that trick, not today.

“I like her,” Numa said.  “You can tell that she and Echo worked well together.”

“Bodies, bodies, everywhere,” Jesse sang out.

Slick was trying not to grimace at the idea of dealing with a Jedi.  Rex and Cody were going to be grating enough.  “Guess she’s tolerable if she’s helping Echo destroy things.”

Cody was easy enough to recognize, even gray-haired and apparently intent on collecting facial scars.  There was a Mandalorian in blue-on-black armor standing next to him.  It clicked the moment Slick recognized the particular shade of blue he wore, the same one Echo had left tied around the sleeve of Slick’s jacket.

Well—sewn around, actually.  Echo was a fucker who knew that Slick wasn’t patient enough to pick out stitches just to take it off.

“Ya know, my knee suddenly hurts,” Rex said to Cody.

Cody just raised an eyebrow.  “Your asshole sense is tingling, huh?”

Rex pulled off his helmet, revealing a white-bearded face, shorn head, and a look of irritated disbelief.  “I know he’s not here right now, but was that really necessary?”

Cody smirked.  “Yep.”

“The universe is a raging, gods-awful bitch,” Slick announced, which got everyone’s attention.

Cody just seemed to sigh in agreement, which wasn’t fun at all.  “Yeah, it is.”

Rex eyed Cody before he looked at Slick.  “How was prison?”

Slick took a breath.  If he wasn’t going to get to throw any punches, then he wasn’t pulling them, either.  “Netted me an ARC, three new spoken languages, and a hell of a lot of blowjobs.”

“And high on the list of things I never wanted to think about:  that,” Cody grumbled.  “Thanks.”

“You’re bleeding on the landscape,” Rex pointed out.

Slick grinned, pretty sure it was all teeth.  “Hey, born and bred to be fertilizer.  I just refuse to do it all at once.”

“Uh huh.”  Rex glanced down at Slick’s leg.  “Didn’t you learn to watch where you fuckin’ step the first time you lost that foot?”

“No punching!” Jesse reminded him the moment Slick opened his mouth.  “Medic’s orders.”

“Fuck the medic!” Slick snapped.

Jesse’s eyes lit up.  “Hey, that is a fabulous idea,” he said as he turned around and fucking _left._

Slick shook his head.  “Fuck.  I walked right into that one.”

“Hobbled, more like,” Cody said.

The three of them glared at each other.  Rex broke first, looking away with a grin on his face, shoulders heaving with silent laughter.

“You fucker,” Slick said to Cody, but there was no fire in the words.  It wasn’t exactly forgiving hugs—he would have bitten his way out of that shit—but suddenly he just didn’t want either of them dead anymore.

Cody shrugged.  “Hey, when the situation arises, gotta jump in with both feet.”

“Seriously?” Rex asked.  “Just…stop.  Please.”

“We’re not keeping _any_ of them,” Slick said to Numa, who was grinning.

“I don’t think we have much choice when it comes to Jesse.  He and Kix do seem connected at the hips,” Numa countered.

“Aw, gods, no,” Rex groaned.

Cody was looking at Numa like he’d finally found a kindred spirit aside from Kenobi.  “Oh, I like you.”

“Like, or like-like?” Numa asked, head tilted as she regarded Cody.  “I do have a good start on a harem, and it would be nice to accomplish something my mother did not.”

“I don’t really—no, uhm, no,” Cody stuttered, and Rex lost his shit laughing.

Slick was trying so hard not to smile that his jaw was aching.  “Okay.  That makes up for not getting to watch Boil punch you.”

“Harem what?  What did I miss?” Kix asked, kicking his way past an Imperial that tried to grab his foot.  “Also, who broke Rex?”

“Fucking puns,” Numa said in an innocent voice, and Slick gave up.  He hurt too much not to laugh at that, even if it made his leg throb worse.

“Gotcha,” Kix said.  He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his hair was starting to fill in the jagged lightning bolts he insisted on keeping, but otherwise he didn’t look traumatized from his temporary tenure as an Imperial POW.  “Cody, was that really necessary?”

“Eh.  Slick started it.”

Kix glared at Slick, narrow-eyed.  “What did I tell you when you were ten?  WATCH WHERE YOU FUCKING STEP!”

Slick rolled his eyes.  “Nobody died.  Worth it.”

“ _You_ might have died, dumbass!”

“Bionics have greater resistance to that kind of explosive force,” Slick said.  “I’d still do it again.  Would have been at least two of us dead if I hadn’t.”

Kix expression softened.  “Yeah, fine.  I get it, but you’re responsible for Echo.”

“Usually am?” Slick wondered, and then flinched when the muted roar of a massive explosion rolled in from the south, vibrating the ground beneath his foot.  “The fuck?”

“I’m not actually sure who to give credit to.  I mean, blowing shit up is a 501st tradition, and they’re all 501st,” Rex said.

“Oh, trust me.  They might have helped, but Echo made the executive decision to blow the shit out of that base.”  Kix glanced around.  “Where’s Jesse?”

“He went looking for you,” Numa said.  “I’m surprised you missed each other, given your attachment.”

Kix gave her an odd look when Rex snorted laughing.  “I don’t even—nope, moving along.  Did anyone tell him?”

“It hadn’t come up,” Rex said, which made Numa muffle a cackle.  “But I did want that one to be a surprise.”

“Yeah.  Gotta keep a leg up.”

Rex stared up at the sky while Numa giggled.  “Cody, are you trying to use up a quarter century of puns at once?”

“Rex, I’m a semi-functional alcoholic who hasn’t drank or slept in days,” Cody replied in blunt honesty.  “Of course I am.”

Slick decided that ignoring Cody and Rex was probably the best idea.  He’d at least made it through nearly three decades without becoming a sodden drunk.  “Am I going to like this surprise, Kix?”

Kix frowned, glancing around at each of them but never quite meeting Slick’s gaze.  “Well…no?  I mean, maybe, you’re not trying to kill Cody and Rex, so maybe yes?”

“When’s the last time you slept?” Slick asked, not liking the babble that Kix was picking up.

Kix shrugged.  “Little bit before I committed mass Imperial murder, but I’m not hallucinating yet, so I’m good.”

“Kix,” Rex said gently.  “No, you’re not.”

Kix scowled.  “You’re not my commanding officer anymore, so you don’t have to be all...commandery.”

“Kix!” Slick barked.

Kix squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at his forehead.  “Nope, you’re right.  That was really bad.  I’m done.  I want a shower, a nap, and for reality to make sense again, but I gave up on that three months ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” Rex whispered.

“Hey, I told you, it wasn’t your fault,” Kix said, waving his hand in the air like he was trying to find something.  “You were doing what you were supposed to do, you were trying to save Fives—” Kix let out a choked sob.  “Fuck.”

“Dammit,” Rex murmured, and hugged Kix.  Kix clung to Rex like he was a lifeline, hands finding armor edges to grasp, and keened like his fucking heart was breaking.  Rex just held him, grief making him seem so much older.

Slick looked away, uncomfortable as all hell.  He didn’t know what else to do.

Numa shook her head.  “I hate this war.”

“Yeah,” Slick replied, feeling the ache of years and stupid decisions weighing him down.  “Me, too.”

Slick was expecting Echo to be angry.  Anyone who spent that much concentrated effort at destroying everything in his path was definitely pissed off.

He just wasn’t quite expecting rage.

“YOU!  YOU ARE A FUCKING MORON!”

Slick refused to flinch; he’d heard that enough in training as a kid that the words didn’t faze him.  It was the emotion that came with the words that almost rocked him back.

“I’m fine!”  Then Slick noticed their audience trailing in, which included Jesse, a Togrutan with lightsabers, and a tall motherfucker he’d never wanted to see again.  He pointed at them with one hand in disbelief.  “What the actual fuck!”

“Hey, no, ignore them.  I’m talking to _you_ right now!”

“Ignore the—I’m not ignoring the fucking dead Jedi, Echo!”

“Wasn’t actually dead,” the Togrutan standing next to Skywalker said.

“Same,” Kix and Jesse added in the same breath.

“Totally was absolutely dead,” Skywalker told them, which…didn’t help.  Anything.

“Half of us are supposed to be dead!” Echo shouted.  “It’s not exactly weird at this point!”

“And I am _still fine,_ ” Slick insisted.

Echo all but spat at him.  “You stepped on a fucking thermal detonator, asshole!  How the fuck does that equal fine?”

No punches pulled, Slick reminded himself.  “Hey, you already exploded once, and that was fucking enough!”

“You could have died!” Echo shouted.

That made something twist in his gut, like someone had come along and shoved a vibroblade into Slick’s flesh.  “BETTER ME THAN YOU!” he roared.

Echo froze in place, his mouth hanging open.  Slick could almost see the anger draining away, replaced by an offended glare that did nothing to hide the hurt in his eyes.

 _“Nunarir ash’am_ ni,” Echo hissed at him.

Slick glared back.  “Don’t you even fuckin’ pull that right now, _Eyayah._ ”

_“Rujii nunarir as gar ganar kriffing jaro!”_

“What are they saying?” Tano asked.

Skywalker tilted his head.  “Lovers’ spat?”

“I do not have a—” Slick drew in a breath and changed tactics.  _“Kriffing usen’ye!”_ he told Skywalker, because tradition, and then went back to glaring at Echo.  _“Ni nunarir ganar kriffing jaro!  Ibac cuy’gar kriffing shabiir!”_

Echo’s eyes narrowed to glittering, angry slits.  _“Nu daar, cu kriffing r’nu!  Tion’jor narir gar sirbur ibac osik?”_

 _“Gar hiibir kriffing resol tracy’uur’nyn sha kyr’ysc Imperial yaim’aru ru’naast’mhi!”_ Slick yelled.  _“Tion’jor nu ibac sosol ti jaro?”_

_“Ni ganar ner kriffing beskar’gam!”_

_“Tion narir gar mirdir ad’eta’sheyn simir’ruug’la shuk’yc taab’gota banar at cuy?”_ Slick asked in a snide voice.

“Scrap metal, after you blew it up,” Jesse said.

Echo and Slick rounded on the asshole interrupting them.  _“VENCUYANI DAYN IBIC!”_

Jesse held up both hands.  “Sheesh, fine, I’m sorry I interrupted the foreplay!”

“He’s right, though,” Echo admitted.  “It _is_ scrap metal now.”

Slick was caught for a moment, still wondering if their sexual history was about to be aired in front of everyone and their partner.  Then he stared at Echo before giving in.  “Yeah.  It kind of is.”

Echo tilted his head, eyed Slick in a way that was sort of thoughtful and half-terrifying, before he said, “You know…you don’t have to try for the matching bionics thing.  Getting married is a hell of a lot easier.”

Slick was expecting many things, but not that.  “What?”

Echo just re-summarized, the little shit:  “Married.  Cheaper, less painful.”

“What?” Slick repeated, feeling like the conversation had just picked him up and dropped him about five kliks west of their position.  Echo was saying words in Basic, but they made no sense at all.

“You do not need to be tossing body parts at me in some fucked up attempt at spousal gifting,” Echo said patiently.  “We’re not Trandoshan, we’re Mandalorian.”

Slick reared back; Numa’s hand dropping down to the small of his back probably kept him from landing on his ass.  “What the fuck makes you think I’d actually marry you?”

Echo grinned.  “Well, we’re standing here with an awful lot of people who’d be upset with you if you made me sad.”

Slick narrowed his eyes.  “Witnesses.  Blackmail.”

“Yep!”

Slick felt his lip curl up, still not quite a smile.  “Isn’t getting someone to sign contracts under duress or while medically incapacitated illegal, and not-binding?”

“Who the fuck said anything about signing?  This is just about agreeing,” Echo said.

“Oh?  So what the fuck are you going to do about the signing part?”

Echo shrugged.  “I’ll think of something.”

“Conniving little shit,” Slick muttered, and allowed that defiant, angry curl of the lip to become a real smile.  “Okay.  Yeah.”

Echo blinked in surprise.  “Wait, yes?”

“Yes, you idiot—do I need to spell it out?” Slick asked, annoyed by the sudden show of stupid.  “Fine!  _Ik’te ghour ittin, essru—”_ but the last part was cut off because Echo kissed him.  It was a sudden movement, so it made pain flare up from his leg, but Slick gave absolutely zero fucks.

“What the hell did he say?”

“‘I said yes already, asshole,’” Jesse translated.

Cody just made a frustrated noise.  “I will apologize for every single pun if you will figure out how to rewind time so I did not have to just witness that.”

“Hey, where’s your sense of romance?” Boil asked him.

“I don’t fucking have one,” Cody shot back.

Slick didn’t feel like there was true ground beneath his feet until Echo took over for Numa, supporting him so he didn’t fall over.  The expression on Jesse’s face was really entertaining.  “Look, we are fucking clones.  If there’s something you should be really used to seeing—”

“No, it isn’t that,” Jesse said, cutting him off.  Slick followed his line of sight and realized Jesse was staring at Numan’arru.  “It’s uhm…hooo, this is awkward.  You’re Numa, right?  Tiny little Numa from Ryloth, adopted that grumpy asshole there?”

Numa smiled; Boil scowled at Jesse’s description of him, but the fucking boot fit.  “One and the same,” she confirmed.

“Oh.  Oh, shit.  Boil, please do not murder me.”

Kix went wide-eyed.  “No, that’s my line.”

Boil’s scowl got more pronounced as Numa grinned.  “See?  I told you I had a harem forming.”

Boil winced at Numa’s declaration.  “You were somewhere else; you have not had time to do…things,” Boil said to Jesse.  “Why am I not-murdering you?”

Jesse held up his blaster rifle, stock outwards, so they could see the design engraved in the metal.  Slick took a quick glance.  “Twi’lek dancing girl.  So what?”

“Nice of him to leave her clothes on,” Echo added.

Jesse shook his head.  “Take a closer look, dumbasses.”

“Those are—those are very…”  Numa glanced down at her outfit.  “That’s a perfect match.  Neat!”

“When did you get that done?” Kix asked in a choked voice.

“Little over ten years ago.”  Jesse slung the rifle and its exact duplicate of Numan’arru over his shoulder again.  “Right before we got stranded for a decade.”

“Shit.”  Boil glanced at Numa.  “Play nice with your toys,” he said, and Numa beamed.

“I’m just…kind of terrified right now.  Going with terrified,” Kix said.

Rex was shaking his head.  “Roaming fuckin’ midichlorians.”

“Maybe, but I wasn’t receiving them via—” Whatever Jesse was about to blurt out was halted by Kix’s hand over his mouth. 

“No,” Kix told him sternly.  “I know what you were about to say, and the answer is _no_.”

“But zero-G!” Jesse managed to get out around Kix’s fingers.  “You told everyone!”

“Yes, and I get to tell a whole lot of new people, too,” Kix replied.  “But this is us, and that’s them.  You yelled at me to learn some manners; you have to do the same.”

“That’s not nearly as much fun!” Jesse protested.

“You know, let’s just…find Pulsar, Click, and get off of this rock,” Slick said.  “Consider it an order or something.  I want to leave this dump.”

“We lost Wolffe, too,” Cody said, after glancing around.

“Great,” Rex muttered.  “Let’s hope he’s just off trying to find the stragglers.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

Shit.  Shit, shit, shit, fuck all this, kriffing hells—fuck, he was out of language already.  That served Pulsar right, sticking to Imperial standard and never learning another language outside of Basic.  He only remembered snatches of Mando’a from childhood.

Pulsar stood up from the hole in the ground he’d hidden in, smashing a stormtrooper in the face, caving in helmet and shattering dark-tinted goggles. The trooper went down; Pulsar hit him twice more for good measure and then stole all of the dead man’s weaponry.

This was a complete clusterfuck.  He wanted Kix back as much as the others—you did not get a brother back from two decades in an ice box just to lose him to Imps—but they had managed to find the biggest hornet’s nest of fanatical Imperials this side of the Cron Drift.

Worse, he’d managed to get separated from everyone.  He thought he’d heard Echo screaming at some point, but not in pain.  That usually meant Pulsar would find a trail of Imperial bodies, gifts from an incensed former ARC.

He’d found no other sign of the rest of Lylek Squad, except for some of the holes in the ground that meant Boil’s handiwork with explosives.  No, wait—that particular networked series of craters was Numa.  She liked being geologically and geometrically precise.

Pulsar noticed the double squad of stormtroopers just before they noticed him.  He made three of them dead before he was fired on, which meant diving into one of Numa’s crafted holes for cover.  Where was a thermal detonator when he needed one?  Fuck, where were the crazy people he worked with when he needed them?

Okay, so he didn’t _need_ -need them.  It would just be convenient.

Pulsar popped the cap from a blaster charge, rewired the feed, put it back together, and then shoved it into his stolen blaster pistol.  A three count, and then he threw his improvised detonator at one of the squads.

Now that was a satisfying explosion.

Pulsar used the cover of falling dirt to take a quick glance.  “Just two of you pricks?” he muttered in dismay.  Did the Empire finally wise up and give the bastards better armor?  If so, he was gravely offended.  His people had needed that years ago, and instead of armor, they’d received graves or incinerations.

If he hadn’t looked up again in that moment, Pulsar would have missed it.  Imperial rifles were just homing in on his position when it was like the fucking ground rose up around them.

Pulsar blinked twice, scrubbed dirt from his eyes, and watched in amazed disbelief as six small, gray-skinned, gray-cloaked figures decimated the remaining Imperials in less than five seconds.

“Holy fucking shit.”

One of the Death Commandos spun around.  Pulsar winced, hands tightening on his rifle.  He was either about to die, or—

“PULSAR!”

No, he was not about to die.  Excellent.

Whemmha got to him first, flinging her strong, wiry body at him in a flying tackle that dropped him onto his back, knocking the wind out of him.  “Hi,” he gasped.

Whemmha purred at him.  “It is the star-born!” she cried, as another five Noghri piled on top of them.  Pulsar winced; he wasn’t used to that much weight trying to sit on him all at once.

Pulsar held out his hand, which was gripped by three others.  “How the hell are you guys?” he wheezed.

“We sound better than you do,” the youngest pointed out, giggling.

“Have we broken you?” Whemmha asked, giving Pulsar an innocent look.

“You guys are heavy, and gravity works,” Pulsar retorted.  “Get off!”

The young one giggled again; Whemmha chuckled as they all sprang clear.  Then she used her grip on his hand to yank him to his feet.  “Pulsar, now of the fearsome Lylek.”

“Whemmha clan Uroghr,” Pulsar replied.  “How did you know about—”

“We are here with friends,” the next-ranked Noghri said.

“The _ary’ush_ ,” the youngest informed him.

“Among others,” Whemmha agreed.

Pulsar felt the blood drain from his face.  It was funny; he’d read about people saying that could happen, but nobody mentioned that it was one of the most terrifying feelings in existence.  “No.”

“Yes,” Whemmha corrected, and squeezed his hand again.  “Fear not.  The _ary’ush_ is as he should be, not as the Emperor made him.”

“He’s _dead_ ,” Pulsar snarled, resisting the urge to yank his hand free.

The Noghri all looked at each other.  “I think we have agreed to term it, ‘was dead,’ for now,” Whemmha said.

“The _ary’ush_ says, ‘Weird Jedi shit,’” the youngest said.

Whemmha sighed.  “Khabarakh.”

“What?  I am quoting the _ary’us_ h; I have not been forbidden from doing so!”

“Pulsar, this is Kabarakh clan Khimbar, my second-nephew,” Whemmha introduced the young one.  “With us are Harrrukh and Sheekh, Ghiffk and Reeuuth.”

“I remember Sheekh,” Pulsar said.  Sheekh smiled in pleasure, showing off all of his pointed teeth.

It took another moment to pull up the right greeting for the others.  “Nice to meet the rest of you, family to my friend.”  Casual, since he was already named friend, but formal enough for proper recognition.

“And you, star-born,” Khabarakh said, and four of the Noghri dropped into deep bows.  “Second of the _ary’ush._ ”

Pulsar felt his skin crawl.  “I don’t think that counts anymore.”

“It never stopped counting,” Whemmha said, giving him a stern look.  “We could not find you; that did not mean we stopped thinking of you as our own.”

Pulsar managed a faint smile.  Darth Vader was apparently not dead, but hells, Kix and Echo were supposed to be dead.  It wasn’t as if it was a completely unheard-of situation.  “Thanks.”

“So many star names in one squad,” Ghiffk mused.  “The other had no star name, but wore it on his face.  The injured one.”

“Injured?” Pulsar felt ice and adrenaline strike at once.  Slick wasn’t prone to acts of insanity on the battlefield—honestly, he was the most cautious crazy person out of an entire batch of fucking crazy people—but if he was hurt... 

“Fuck.  We have to find Click.”

“Click? Like—” Reeuuth clicked their tongue several times.  “Yes?”

“Yes, like the noise.”  Pulsar checked the charge on his stolen blaster rifle; Whemmha took that as a cue and signaled to her squad.  The Noghri swarmed the dead soldiers, collecting the remaining charges available.

Pulsar collected three, shoving them into jacket pockets, before accepting a fourth to make sure his rifle had a fresh charge.  “Thank you.”

“What does he smell like?” Khabarakh asked.  “Family to you, we know, but all of you smell as family, even the green sister.”

 _Noghri terms.  Think in Noghri terms,_ Pulsar reminded himself.  “Click smells like deep forest and complete insanity.”

“Oh, that one!” Harrrukh exclaimed, grinning.  “Yes, I saw that one.  He has been busy.”

Pulsar winced.  Busy in Click terms could mean many things.  “Shit.”

“No, no, busy in ways Noghri approve of,” Harrrukh tried to reassure Pulsar, but that didn’t help much.  Things that Noghri approved of were also not necessarily nice things.  They tended to be violent and messy things, instead.

He’d been wrong.  The trail of bodies Pulsar found weren’t caused by an ARC on a rampage.  Pulsar caught Click in the middle of killing the shit out of some poor hapless stormtrooper with nothing more than his fists and an inactive vibroblade.

“Uh, Click?”

“What—Pulsar!”  Click grinned at him.  He was half-covered in mud, had somehow managed to actually tear the armored cloth of his jacket (fucking _how?_ ) and had a manic gleam in his eyes that didn’t bode well.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Pulsar asked, keeping his voice mild.

“Oh.  I ran out of charge, like, an hour ago,” Click said, and then stabbed the trooper again when the man gurgled.  “STAY FUCKING DEAD!  Fucking roaches!  How are there so many of these bastards still around?”

“You found a very, very large barracks system,” Whemmha informed Click.

Click stared at Whemmha, pointing at her with the reddened end of his vibroblade.  “Pulsar?  Why is the ground following you around, and why does it have teeth?”

“I like him,” Ghiffk decided.

“Click,” Pulsar said, when Click stared at Ghiffk in utter bafflement.  “Click, these are Noghri.  Not roaming bits of ground.”

“Noghri—wait, _those_ Noghri?” Click disappeared the knife up his jacket sleeve without cleaning it first.  Great.  That was going to smell fragrant later.

“Nice to meet you, Those Noghri,” Click said, stepping over the dead trooper.  “I have no idea what else to say, though.  I’m kind of having a mental-snap sort of day.”

“You meant literally crazy.  I see,” Khabarakh said, but he still treated Click with respect.  “Will you be well, friend of the star-born?”

“Star-born—oh.  Pulsar.  Uh…”  Click glanced around at the torn landscape, the trees, and the sky.  “Probably?  I usually am.  Sometimes it takes a while, and it’ll probably help to find out the others are not dead.”

“Yes, that would be a good thing to share,” Whemmha said.  “Your brother, Kix; he is here.”

Pulsar sighed and felt a huge knot of tension uncurl in his chest.  “Oh, thank the gods.”  Eel would have been fucking impossible to live with otherwise.  Slick and Echo would have been even worse.

“Really?”  Click’s face lit up, some of the mania clearing from his eyes.  “Neat.  Did you rescue him?”

Whemmha snickered, as did most of her teammates.  “He rescued himself, as a proper Noghri would.”

Pulsar stared at Whemmha.  “He—wait—Kix?”

“No matter the species, one always underestimates the medics,” Sheekh murmured.

“I don’t even want to fucking know,” Pulsar said, and he meant it.  “Okay.  As long as we’re pulling not-dead people out of our asses, who else did you bring?”

For some reason, that set the entire group of Noghri to snickering again.  “Many,” Whemmha gasped, and then hid her face with both hands to muffle the sound of her laughter.

Click gave Pulsar a confused look.  “Should we be concerned?  Or should we be laughing, too?”

Khabarakh uttered a bizarre coughing sound—wait, not bizarre.  That was desperately restrained giggling trapped in a Noghri voice box.  “The medic found his mate.”

“I’m going with confused as all hell,” Pulsar told Click.

“Perhaps that is wisest,” Whemmha suggested.  “The _ary’ush_ travels with his former apprentice, as well.”

“Wait.  _Tano_ is here?”  Pulsar stared down at Whemmha in shock.  He hadn’t heard of her dying, no, but he also didn’t expect random Togrutan Jedi to show up on his muddy doorstep, either.

“Is this a problem?” Whemmha asked, doing a pretty good impression of a humanoid batting her eyes in innocence.

“Nah.  I mean, I tried to kill her once, but it’s fine.”

“You did what?” Click asked.  “Sixty-Six?”

“No, way before that.  Possessed,” Pulsar said, refusing to even mention the name of the creatures responsible.  “Bad day.  Kid kicked all our asses; I was damn proud of her.”

“Hey, there you are!” Pulsar heard someone roar, and then things got weirder.

 

*          *          *          *

 

Click wasn’t having a good day.  Or he was having a great day and couldn’t tell—sometimes he just didn’t process stimuli properly.  Alliance medics wanted to give him drugs for it, but hell, he’d been doing just fine for decades on his own, figuring out reality from fantasy.

Except for today, because his dead Commander was carting him around like a bean sack slung over one shoulder.  Click tried to whimper out something about being capable of walking and not being hurt, not his blood, but his dead Commander wasn’t having it, Pulsar was laughing, and the ground-lumps that Pulsar insisted were Noghri were also grinning at him.

What the fuck.

Also, why was Slick missing a foot?

He had no idea he’d asked the question out loud when Echo answered him, loud and mocking: “Because the jackass stepped on a thermal detonator.”

“Seriously, will you let that fuckin’ go?” Slick asked.

“On our fuckin’ death bed,” Echo replied.

Click tried not to just give up and moan in confusion.  It distressed Kix and Numa—and there _was_ a Kix!  He was upside down, but that was definitely Kix. 

However, Slick was not Echo; Echo was the one that Click would reasonably expect to lose a limb.  He’d already lost two, so it wasn’t like that was a stretched theory or anything.

“You doing okay there, soldier?” one of the new brothers on the ground asked him.  He was upside down and had double the facial scars, but Click was pretty sure that was Commander Cody, especially when he said, “Wolffe, for fuck’s sake, put that man down.”

Yes, please.  Click knew he’d flashbacked to being planet-stranded so hard that he had no _idea_ how many Imperials he killed before Pulsar turned up and brought reality with him.  He just knew that his rifle was dead, that his knife was broken, and it had a hell of a lot of blood on it.

“Many,” one of the dirt-lump Noghri offered helpfully.  “Possibly hundreds.  You are most impressive.”

“Okay,” Click said, and then blinked in delighted surprise.  Good, he was aware of when he was talking again.  That was great progress towards not being completely nuts.

“I don’t want to!” Wolffe told Cody, sounding miffed.

“No, it’s fine,” Click offered.  “I’m okay with being carried around by an armored hallucination.”

“Click?”  Kix was staring up at him—down at him?—in open concern.  “Are you all right there, brother?”

Click tried not to whine, but it came out that way, anyway.  “The ground is moving and it has teeth and it keeps calling Pulsar by the wrong name.  I’m pretty sure I killed a lot of motherfuckers, but I can’t remember it.  Also, my dead commander is pretending that I am a sack.”

“I am _not_ fucking dead!” Wolffe retorted.

“Click.”  There was Eel, who was nice and familiar and never expected Click to be anything except what he was—nuts.  “Wolffe was on the personnel list with Rex that Slick found.  Remember?”

Click thought about it.  “So…not dead?”

Wolffe snorted.  “No.”

“Okay.”  Click could deal with that part.  He would eventually, anyway.  “Then why am I a sack?”

He could almost feel the emotional shift.  Neat, except no, he didn’t want to be Jedi-anything, thanks.  “You’re the only member of my Pack that I’ve seen since Sixty-Six came down,” Wolffe said in a quiet voice.

“Oh.  I can be a sack, then,” Click said, and Wolffe’s arm tightened around Click’s waist, holding him firmly in place.  It was probably for the best—the moving bits of Noghri ground were still freaking him out.

Then Anakin Skywalker turned up in his peripheral, but he was getting acknowledged, so that wasn’t a hallucination, either.  Fuck.  Click really was having an odd day. 

Skywalker approached Pulsar with a calm bearing; Pulsar was doing a very good job of not bolting.  Click always knew when Pulsar wanted to run, especially after their encounter with gigantic desert worms on that planet where Kix had been frozen.  It was a really distinct eye-twitch.

Pulsar straightened to attention.  “Sir,” he said in a strangled voice.

“Pulsar.”  Skywalker had a grateful smile on his face.  “You made it out.  I didn’t—I didn’t know if you had.”

“ _We_ got him out,” one of the dirt-lump Noghri said in a proud female voice.

Skywalker nodded his appreciation and then hugged Pulsar.  The eye-twitch was really pronounced before Pulsar got himself under control, and even managed to return the hug.  “Uh.  Sir.”

“Everyone else is gone,” Skywalker whispered, words that made Wolffe’s grip tighten, and his brothers’ faces fill with regret.  “All of them.  It’s just you and the Noghri.”

“Oh.”  Pulsar swallowed.  “Parse?”

Skywalker just shook his head.  “Alcohol poisoning.”

Pulsar sighed in resignation.  “Shit.”

“I have absolutely no idea what’s going on,” Cody complained.

“Yeah, let’s just roll with it for now,” Kix said, cutting off whatever Commander—no, Captain?  Commander-Captain?  Fuck it—Rex was going to say in response.  “It’ll be a lot easier that way, trust me.”

Cody shrugged.  “Whichever.”

“What’d I miss?” Wolffe asked, while Skywalker and Pulsar continued a conversation that Click couldn’t hear.  It had to be intense, given the expressions on their faces—and on the faces of the short ground lumps.  Man, they had a hell of a lot of teeth.

“Uh, everyone on our side is alive, all the Imperials on this rock are dead, or running away in pants-wetting terror, and I’m pretty sure Slick and Echo are engaged,” Boil summarized.

Click grinned.  Took them long enough.

Wolffe turned to face the couple in question.  “Congratulations, I hope you don’t kill each other.”

“Hey!”

“I heard the fucking shouting, Echo,” Wolffe explained, sounding pleased.  “That’s how we found you assholes.”

“I can’t believe you asked him before I had the chance to ask Kix,” Jesse groused.

“What—why the _fuck_ hadn’t you married him already?” Wolffe thundered.

“Beeeecause it wasn’t legal?” Jesse offered in his defense.  That was also weird—Click was pretty sure Kix had mentioned that Jesse was dead, but apparently it was Not-Dead day.

Kix just snorted.  “Who says I’d have you?  Kriffing zero-g.”

Jesse looked confused for a moment, then appalled.  “I _said_ I was sorry!  For a full year, even!”

Click could feel the vibration of someone’s helmet-based communicator just before Wolffe lifted his free arm and waved at Click’s squad.  “Just got a transmission from upstairs.  We’ve got inbound Star Destroyers coming to act as reinforcements for Imps that aren’t here anymore.  We need to go topside and jump a few systems away before they arrive to find the mess we’ve left for them.”

“Can you make that thing fly again, Click?” Eel asked him.

Click thought about how the ship had gone down, possibilities flittering along.  “Yeah, we’ve got enough people to manage a quick fix.  She’ll need longer time for a refit once we get her in someone else’s hangar, though.”

“Works for me.  Let’s go,” Slick said.

 

*          *          *          *

 

“You stayed?” is the first thing Mara asked Luke when she saw him approaching.

Luke put his hands in his trouser pockets and shrugged, smiling.  “I’m not used to being the one that gets to stay home to make sure the lights stay on.  Normally it’s pretty much a given that I’m right at the front of whatever mess people are making.  It’s nice to get the chance to sit back and let someone else break things for a while.”

Mara just gave him an odd look.  “I would expect you to run headlong into danger, not stay out of it.”

“Well…”  Luke hesitated.  He still didn’t know what the deal was with Mara disliking him—what he did know was that she was also trying _not_ to dislike him on sight.  It made him want to be certain he was giving her the best kind of answer.  “If there’s someone on the other side of that danger who needs help, and there’s no one else?  Yes.  Yes, I’ll dive right into danger and smile in danger’s face, or whatever silly heroic analogy you want for the circumstances.  But in this case?  There are a _lot_ of fully trained and capable soldiers, plus two fully trained Jedi, who can go and do something about the situation with that Imperial base.  The fighter squadrons are on stand-by, just in case we get any other Imperials who turn up looking to play.  Our one prisoner is accounted for.  I’d rather just…be.”

“I don’t understand you.”  Mara scowled.  “I mean, I do—but you also don’t sound like the man who blew up the first Death Star.”

Imperial propaganda.  Joy.  Luke tried not to sigh; he should be used to it by now.  “You’re…Ben’s student.  Right?”

“Padawan.  Apprentice.  Whatever term you want to use,” Mara replied, a slight mocking return of his earlier words about analogies.

“Okay.  So was I, for a little while.”  Luke noted that Mara didn’t blink.  She knew that, then.  “After he was…dead…uhm—that’s weird to say, since he’s just in the next room.”

Mara’s perpetual scowl when it came to all things Luke Skywalker lightened, turned into a smirk that had real signs of humorous fire in it.  “You do get used to it.”

Luke nodded, hoping that was truth and not just a coping mechanism at work.  “He was…he didn’t leave.  Force ghosts—I don’t know what you know about them—”

“I’ve met Yoda,” Mara said in a tone of utter resignation.

“You get used to him, too,” Luke said blithely, and Mara rolled her eyes.  “Ben and I, we’d talk often while I was training under Master Yoda.  Ben said that one of the only things he wanted for me was to _never_ feel like I’d done something I couldn’t take back.  ‘Some things cannot be undone,’ he’d say.  I wasn’t sure what he meant at the time, but I did say that if he was worried about me wanting to take the Death Star back…I wouldn’t.  I didn’t want to.  It had to be that way.  He asked me why.”

Mara crossed her arms.  “And?”

“Destroying the Death Star killed tens of thousands of people,” Luke said, a fact that he still struggled with on bad days.  “But there was Alderaan—a world not in active revolt against the Empire, as far as the available evidence was concerned.  Then there would have been Yavin IV.  Yavin itself, maybe, just to clear out the potential drek.  What I knew was that Tarkin was not going to stop.”

Luke had to look away for a minute.  “It’s terrible damned math, but tens of thousands versus untold billions?  I’d rather it be the military men and women who’d signed up, knowing that there was a chance they could die, over the innocents that never had a choice at all.”

When Luke glanced up at Mara again, there was another odd expression on her face that he didn’t quite know how to identify.  “If you’d made it into Imperial service instead of going straight to the Rebellion—the Alliance,” she corrected, her lips twitching into a temporary grimace.  “You would have been the kind of Imperial officer I would have preferred to serve with.”

“I—thanks,” Luke managed, recognizing that the words were well-intentioned.  They were important to her, at least, and he had to acknowledge them.  “Not a lot of that sort of thing going around Imperial ranks, then?”

“At first, there was.”  Mara frowned.  “But Alderaan—those were the officers who deserted after Tarkin’s first act with the Death Star.  Not all at once, but in short order a lot of good men and women had disappeared from the ranks.  I used to call them the worst sort of traitors.  Now I just hate myself for being so blind.”

“Hey, no,” Luke said immediately.  “The only reason you should ever be angry at yourself for not seeing the truth is if you have it rubbed in your face and _still_ refuse to see it.”  He decided to take a flying leap of verbal faith.  “I bet you would have been the type of officer I’d have liked serving with, too.”

Mara bit her lip in a way that told him she wanted to smile, but didn’t quite dare.  “I would always have been in charge.”

Luke grinned.  “That’s usually for the best.”

“Right.”  Mara seemed uncomfortable, but then she tilted her head in Medical’s direction.  “Go on in.  Just be prepared to duck.”

“Duck.  Right.”  Luke turned to his left, palmed the door open, and halted in the doorway in surprise.

Half of the contents of the medical bay were floating in the air.

Mara was definitely smirking at him, a hint of white teeth showing.  “I warned you.”

“I remember that part, yeah.”  The ribbing told Luke that this was…normal.  Or at least it was Obi-Wan Kenobi-levels of normal.

Ben was sitting on the bed Luke had last seen him assigned to, his eyes closed, his arms resting across his knees.  He wasn’t quite seated in full lotus, but an abbreviated version of it that looked kinder on joints that had just been put through hell.

Luke glanced around at the floating objects.  Anything that hadn’t been secured was in the air, and there was quite a lot of it.  He wondered if Ghulam knew that his CMO was playing it a bit too fast and loose about making sure Medical was secured in case of depressurization, or if gravity decided to stop working.

Or if a Jedi Master decided to perform some sort of active meditation.

A datapad floated past.  Luke reached out to touch it, but it avoided his hand.  It wasn’t a jerk of motion, either, but a smooth movement, a flow, as if a pattern—

Yes, a pattern.  Exactly.  Luke could see it now, ignoring the objects themselves to concentrate on the way they moved around the room.  The datapad had resumed its original course, tumbling in a gentle arc around Ben.

The pattern was the Force—a representation of it, anyway.  Every single thing in the air was following the paths of the Force as it swirled around Ben Kenobi.

“You can come in.”  Ben’s eyes were still closed.  “It’s fine.”

“I know.”  Luke took a breath and walked straight into the mess of captured medical objects.  Everything parted from his path like flowing water, slow and unhurried, until he became a secondary orbital point.

He swallowed down an electrical tingle in the back of his mouth.  Now that he was close to Ben, the pattern felt like it was being branded on his senses.  It was beautiful, the best reflection of the Living Force that he’d ever seen, and Luke had trained on a no-tech swamp world with Yoda.

“It’s an accident,” Ben said, making Luke realize that he’d spoken aloud about the pattern’s beauty.  Ben lifted his hands, his fingers splayed; each object began to fly with unerring precision back to its original location.  “If I drift too far, things around me tend to mimic what I’m doing.”

Luke nodded, watching everything find its home.  “It’s amazing.  I never saw Yoda do that unless he was juggling rocks on purpose.”

“Yoda thought that it was just showing off.  Any Jedi could lift a thing; what impressed Yoda was the reason _behind_ the lift.”

Luke thought about his sunken X-Wing and tried not to wince.  He’d botched that, spectacularly so, but he’d never again made the same mistake.  “What’s the reason behind all of that lifting, then?”

Ben opened his eyes, revealing that odd, bleached-out silvery blue instead of the vivid, desert sky blue they’d once been.  “Seeking patterns.  Looking for connections.”  Ben frowned.  “Trying to undo the damage I caused.”

“That’ll settle on its own, Yoda says,” Luke told Ben, worried about the sense of guilt he could pick up on.  “And it wasn’t your fault.”

“In an extremely convoluted way, it sort of is,” Ben countered, “but then I have to start blaming another, and I don’t want to, so I’m stuck with trying to cope with the mess.”  It was an almost tangible sensation as Ben put the subject aside.  “You stayed?” he asked instead.

Luke smiled at the repetition of the question Mara had greeted him with.  “It was their reunion.  They didn’t need me, not for that.”  He held up the bag he’d brought with him.  “I thought you might appreciate clothes, though.  It’s not much, but we’re about the same height, and I think we’re almost the same size…”

Ben lifted out a black shirt, one that Luke wore if he was going to add the weight of his Jedi tunics over it.  Beneath that was a pair of brown thick-cloth trousers that could stretch at the waist, if need be.  If not, belts existed.

“I don’t, uh, I don’t wear a lot of color,” Luke offered, when Ben’s hand lingered on the black shirt longer than he expected.  “But it’s all clean, at least.”

Ben looked up, an unreadable expression on his face.  “No, it’s fine.  You are—this is very generous, Luke.”

It was the first time Luke had heard Ben say his name in a long time, and it almost brought tears to his eyes again.  Force, but he’d missed this man, even if Ben was not the same old, frail figure he’d once met in the Jundland Wastes.

“Well, I kind of do need them back at some point,” Luke tried to tease, and was heartened when Ben smiled. 

“There is something that I need to do first, though,” Ben said.

“What is it?” Luke asked.  He wanted a conversation desperately, but he also didn’t want to be rude—he didn’t want to _push_ for it.

Ben held out his hand, palm up.  When Luke reached out and accepted it, feeling the rough calluses from intense lightsaber use against his skin, Ben said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?  For this?”  Luke didn’t think the situation warranted an apology.  An explanation that was longer than seven words, maybe, but not an apology.

Ben shook his head.  There was sudden grief in his eyes, moisture that made them appear as shining silver.  “No.  For leaving you.”

Luke felt like he’d just been punched in the gut.  No, he hadn’t actually—he hadn’t expected that.  “I—I mean—” he stuttered, mentally and physically casting about.

Ben patted the foot of the bed.  “Sit, please.”  The moment Luke complied, Ben hugged him.

Luke drew in a sharp breath, stunned by the contact in a way that he hadn’t been on Byss.  Then he rested his head on Ben’s shoulder and held on tight, feeling the soft cloth of medical garb under his hands.  Beneath that was the heat of a living being, complete with the scent of recent bacta.  Beyond that was an intense feeling in the Force, the quietly restrained essence of someone who felt like an actual representation of a vibrant star.

“Oh, that’s a terrible comparison, let’s not do that,” Ben murmured, still holding Luke in a tight embrace.  “We’re trying _not_ to invoke that particular prophecy.”

Luke sat back, trying to discreetly dry his face.  Ben didn’t bother, which left the tear tracks to stand out in sharp relief on his pale skin before they disappeared into the dark red of his beard. 

“You didn’t…I guess I wondered, after a few years,” Luke admitted.  “You didn’t intend to die there, did you?”

“Not there, and not then.”  Ben sighed.  “Make no mistake, Luke—I _was_ dying, and I knew it.  Just before we met, I thought I had at least three months to tell you what you needed to know, to present you to Yoda with more than a pitiful collection of dubious wisdom.  I hoped for six months, as I knew Bail would not be happy until his medics had me in their clutches.  But then Tarkin ordered Alderaan’s destruction.”

Luke thought of that day, the way Obi-Wan had slowly lowered himself down to sit.  There was a brief moment, one Luke often doubted he’d actually witnessed, when Ben had looked like everything he’d ever loved had just been stolen.

Ben nodded, as if sensing his thoughts.  “I nearly dropped dead when Alderaan died,” he said, a faint, sad smile on his face.  “The Death Star was just…I could do no more than what you witnessed.”

“You—you didn’t abandon me.”  Luke bit his lip.  “You didn’t.  I mean, you followed me around for several years afterwards.”  Ben’s scattered words and erratic appearances had always been better than nothing.  It had been something to hold onto, to know that one last aspect of his old life still existed.  Then he’d learned more of the Force, and speaking to Ben had become easier.

“I did,” Ben agreed.  “But it’s not the same.”  He said the words as if he’d shared in that experience, making Luke wonder what ghost—or ghosts—had haunted Ben’s steps on Tatooine.

Ben tilted his head, studying Luke quietly.  Luke could see Old Ben in the gesture, but also something else that was not quite Jedi.  General Kenobi, perhaps, or maybe a weird leftover from having spent years as an actual ghost.

“Ask me.  I can tell that you really want to know.”

Luke ducked his head, a bit embarrassed at having his curiosity so easily read.  “How old are you?”

“Do you mean physically, or up here?” Ben asked, tapping his temple with one finger.

“Both?”  That could answer some of his existing questions, or reveal more he had yet to contemplate.

“Twenty-four,” Ben said, before a wry, mischievous smile crossed his face.  “And sixty-six.”

Luke drew back in surprise.  “Sixty-six? But you didn’t look—”

“I looked to be more like ninety when we met, yes?”  Ben’s smile was warm, but marked by a stark self-awareness.  “Maybe over one hundred Standard, if I’m being honest with myself.”

Tatooine was harsh, and could strip the years from your body the way the sand stripped the rock.  Luke also knew, from frightening experience, that war could age you at a rate that was exhausting to bear…but that was still not enough to explain a thirty-year discrepancy.  There was one other potential culprit he knew of, though.

“Was it the Dyptherias Outbreak?”  Luke asked.  The disease hadn’t been kind to Tatooine, already low on supplies and sitting at absolute zero for available vaccines until some had been…acquired?  Stolen?  He didn’t really remember that part.  Luke’s attention had been focused on the absolute joy of staying with the Darklighter family for two entire weeks, something he’d never been allowed before.

Then he’d gone home, and knew right away that Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru had been sick, a revelation that terrified him.  The illness had practically stripped their youth from them, and they were never the same afterwards.

It was only just now occurring to Luke that he had no idea who must have stayed with Owen and Beru during that time.  He’d never asked what had kept them from crossing death’s door, like so many others had done during those terrible months.  He suspected he was sitting with the answer to that particular question, which made him wonder, so much more, why Uncle Owen had hated Ben Kenobi.

“No, it wasn’t the outbreak,” Ben answered him.  “I had a partial vaccination against Dyptherias from childhood.  The illness, for me, was more inconvenience than terror.”  The lights were bright above them, and yet it was still like a shadow fell over Ben’s features.  “At some point in the near future, ask me about Force Drain, and what it does to living creatures.  Just—just not today.  It isn’t a kind ability, or a happy memory.”

 _Force drain,_ Luke thought, and felt a chill climb up his spine.  “All right.  I’ll ask later,” he agreed, but at that moment, he wasn’t certain that he wanted to.

When Luke had first met Ben, there had been an air of muted sadness to him.  It was a quiet sort of grief that he seemed inured to, something from long ago that no longer bit so hard. 

Now, though, it was like the grief was amplified, a constant pain that Luke could feel in the Force.  He didn’t know what had caused it, or what it was, but it was taking almost everything Luke had not to blurt out that he would fix it, he would make it _right._

“You can’t, but I do appreciate the desire to do so,” Ben said.

Luke’s brow furrowed.  “I wasn’t trying to be loud.”

“It’s proximity, sorry,” Ben apologized, a guilty expression on his face.  “Some people are easier for me to hear than others.  Speaking of overhearing, I know you didn’t just come to deliver clothes.”

“Unfortunately not.”  Luke proceeded to fill him in on the messes that existed beyond Medical’s door.  There was the spy tale to summarize, not to mention High Command’s polite “request” for Ben and Luke’s father to go see them.  Luke wasn’t certain that was the best idea, and Ben didn’t look convinced, either.

“The vote is also tomorrow,” Luke said, and Ben glanced at him in surprise.  “The confirmation votes, the political gathering that officially turns the Alliance into the New Republic.”

Ben rubbed at the bridge of his nose.  “Well—fuck.  That should be interesting to watch, I suppose.”

“And High Command?” Luke asked, almost hoping Ben would say no.  There were politics at play that Luke didn’t trust, even though he did trust Mon Mothma to do her best by the galaxy as a whole.

“We’ll go, but we’re going on _our_ terms,” Ben said, his gaze turning to durasteel in a way that must have been awe-inspiring on a battlefield.  In that moment, he was every inch the Jedi that Luke still hoped to one day be, a strength of presence, a beacon—not for war, not for bloodshed, but for hope and determination.

“What have you got in mind?” Luke asked, curiosity roused by that sudden intensity.

“We’ll discuss it later, once everyone has returned,” Ben said.  “I’d rather not repeat it, and I still need to think on a few things.”

“Fair enough,” Luke said.  “Now what?”

“Now I escape Medical without getting caught,” Ben said in a dry, amused voice.

“Sonic shower’s that way,” Luke pointed out.  Ben nodded before sliding off the bed, heading that direction in a slow walk that spoke of tiredness or pain.  Ben was determined to leave Medical, and Luke knew it would be pointless to try and stop him (he’d tried to stop Chewbacca once; that had not gone well) but that didn’t mean Ben was in the best physical condition to do so.

When Ben returned, his hair was tied back, he was wearing the borrowed clothes, his own boots and coat, and a belt he’d scavenged from somewhere, possibly abandoned by a previous patient.  The lightsaber hanging from it had a beautiful blue sheen to the metal that Luke was dying to ask questions about, but the pinched, grim determination on Ben’s face stopped him.  Questions could wait.

The Gand lieutenant noticed Ben’s departure as they were leaving together.  He looked less than impressed with his patient.  “You should be here for another day, at least.”

Ben just sighed.  “Is there anything _else_ you need to treat me for?  Anything necessary, aside from rest?”

Kvuttinei muttered under his breath in his own language, something Luke didn’t catch.  “No, but your psych eval—”

Ben stopped in place, turned his head, and stared at Kvuttinei.  “I am well aware of my psychiatric health, and its utter lack thereof.  I’m leaving.  Good day, Lieutenant.”

“I’m not prescribing you sleep medication if you have trouble resting tonight!” Kvuttinei yelled after them.

“It never works, anyway,” Ben murmured.

Luke winced.  That wasn’t a good sign, but there were enough of them around.  If Ben needed a babysitter, like some of the Rogues had after the harsher battles—like _he’d_ needed, sometimes—then they could be there for him.

The moment the door for Medical slid open, Mara said, “I’m surprised it took you this long to decide you’d had enough.”

Ben rolled his eyes.  “Just find us a lounge so that I can sit again.  I’d like to trance down in a place that isn’t full of the feel of pain and misery.”

A place for a real healing trance, not just a meditation.  Ben’s early escape suddenly made so much more sense.  “The aft lounge that the Rogues and I used earlier—that one will be…it’s quiet,” Luke said, when words escaped him.  “Also, just about everything in there is secured.”

Ben smiled, understanding Luke perfectly.  “Then that’s exactly where we’ll go.”

 

*          *          *          *

 

The chance to meditate within the confines of a short healing trance was practically Force-sent, as far as Obi-Wan was concerned.  It had been days upon days without that kind peace, and most of those days, he’d been…unavailable.

Unavailable as an analogy for screaming—not Obi-Wan’s best verbal work, but he was, by necessity, burying his head in the sand regarding Byss until he had a true chance to cope with it.  A few meditation sessions aboard ship were not going to be enough.  He needed to go back to Lothal, sit on earth that had become familiar, and try to figure out how to not lose his godsdamned mind.

Trancing down to heal some of what damage remained—exhaustion, mostly—was easy.  The difficult part came when he was immersed in the Force.

Obi-Wan stared at that singular bright cluster of threads, an upcoming point in time so close he could almost reach out and touch it.  If not tonight, it would be…tomorrow.

Tomorrow.  The vote. 

Fuck, what could possibly go wrong during a process that was merely going to confirm twenty-six years of effort?  The laws, the standards of the Alliance, had been set in stone the year after Palpatine declared himself Emperor.

The weird part was that the event itself didn’t feel like a danger—not to anyone aboard the _Tatius_ , and not to anyone who would be attending the vote.  Yavin IV had its own problems, but those problems had no tolerance for the politics of the living.

Obi-Wan tried to figure out that tangle of potential as the Force tried to ease what he’d physically suffered.  He supposed this was what Mace called his Shatterpoints.  The event wasn’t making his prescience flare, but there were multiple potential outcomes from that singular moment.

No; not quite a Shatterpoint.  Mace said he could often look ahead and choose one of those paths to direct outcomes in everyone’s favor.  None of these options were for Obi-Wan’s hand to choose and guide.  That would be the work of others—many others.

A lot of the outcomes were…not favorable.

He could also see the damage he’d created in the Force by casting his gaze back from that future point.  The days preceding his rescue were like trying to read a graphing chart that someone had put through a shredder.

Obi-Wan tried not to sigh.  He’d been literal when he told Cody he’d probably killed people, and he had a strong suspicion as to who one of those victims might have been.  It was not his choice to have broken, to have let go.  It was not his choice to be here; that was on Emmaltine’s shoulders.

It _had_ been his choice to accept Qui-Gon’s offer of returning to an earlier point in his timeline, of trying again.  He’d just—he’d never realized the multitude of consequences that could result.

 _Cody would thank you,_ a voice in the back of his head reminded him.  Obi-Wan accepted that as a truth, and…

…and gods, he’d missed them.  He’d missed them so much it had been easier to just not dwell on it, like he tried not to think on most of the war.

Then, for just a moment, there was a flicker at the edges of his perception.  Obi-Wan lunged in that direction, grief and longing and desperation mixed into a heady fuel to overcome exhaustion.  _Qui-Gon?_

He waited for untold moments, stretched practically to his mental limit.  The flicker never repeated itself.

Obi-Wan almost gave up, right then; he was surrounded by loved ones, but he wanted his Lifemate back!  Why did the universe and the Force insist upon these stupid separations?  It. Was. Not. _Fair!_

 _And now you sound like a toddler throwing a tantrum,_ Obi-Wan scolded himself.  Time was odd; that could have been an echo of Qui-Gon’s presence from when he was still a part of this timeline, now long gone because of that accidental-on-purpose thing he’d done with Lifebond potential and anchor points.

That didn’t change the fact that every fiber of his being had tried to latch onto that semblance of his mate.  He couldn’t allow that to happen again, not when he was sitting in the middle of vast potential for time-travel shenanigans.  Fuck, his life was weird.

Then there was the Sith part.

Venge was mostly integrated within Obi-Wan’s psyche, but there were bits of the Sith that remained, hidden deep and stored away.  Obi-Wan had done it on purpose, had kept that last bit of integration from occurring, because…because…

He hadn’t known, not at the time.  He’d just done it.  Then had come Kam Solusar, soul-hurt by Sidious and the fucking Adepts, and suddenly Venge had a purpose, a reason to exist.

There might be other potential Jedi out there, trapped in a mental maze of horror, that would only respond to the amber gaze of one shrouded in true Darkness.

As Obi-Wan’s awareness of the outside world filtered back in, he heard Luke say, “Well, he swears a bit more than I expected.”

“You get used to that, too,” Mara said.  Then she added, a bit snidely, “Why, does it offend your sensitive ears?”

“No, but it did yours,” Luke countered, and Mara let out a huff of irritation.  Well-played.

“I’m a stick jockey, a pilot,” Luke continued.  “If you’ve spent time with smugglers, then you’ve spent time with pilots, and we’re mouthy.”  Mara must have nodded an affirmative, since Obi-Wan didn’t hear her response.  “Before that, though, I was a farmer.  You grow up knowing how to curse, because you’re always fixing something that broke that you _need_ , so nobody starves to death or dies from dehydration.”

“Really.”  Mara sounded bored, which meant she was paying more attention than she wished to let on.  “What’s the most creative curse a sand farmer of your breeding came up with, then?”

“That could’ve been an insult or a compliment—I bet you were fun at diplomatic functions,” Luke replied.  Obi-Wan hid a smile as he felt Mara’s mixed pleasure at the statement.  “And, uh…geeze, it’s been a while.  Maybe, ‘Fuck a Hutt with a half-mounted vaporator set to parched.’”

“Why would _that_ be considered so creative?” Mara asked, just as Obi-Wan started laughing, bent over double and on the verge of wheezing again.  That was a horrific, hilarious mental image.

“That is the laughter of a man who also hates vaporators,” Luke told Mara.

“I hope nobody would drink the results of that experiment,” Mara said.

“What?  It would just be water,” Luke replied, which only made Obi-Wan laugh harder.

“That’s disgusting!”

“Hey, desert.”

Mara still sounded displeased.  “You may keep your desert all to yourself, then.”

Obi-Wan finally managed to look up.  Luke and Mara were sitting on two chairs opposite each other, both facing him.  “I have to admit, even I would have to give that idea some serious consideration.”

“Jabba did sort of have the air of the diseased,” Mara agreed.

“You mean depraved,” Luke countered, and then his eyes widened.  “That’s where.  That’s where I know you from!  You were there—you were in Jabba’s Palace!”

Mara winced.  “Yes.  I was, ah, supposed to assassinate you.”

Luke blinked a few times, taken aback.  “Well…thanks for not actually doing so?”

“It’s the Hutt you should thank,” Mara snapped back, irritated.  “If he hadn’t proved resistant to the Force, I’d have been on that stupid sail barge.”

“Still grateful that I’m not dead,” Luke returned mildly.  “And it’s a Hutt thing—they’re all immune to mind tricks.  Toydarians, too.”

“It’s not a species thing as a whole,” Obi-Wan decided to cut in.  That was a conversation going in odd directions, and it was starting to make Mara twitchy.  His Padawan still needed calming moments, if only to keep from giving in to the urge to just kill whatever was irritating her, himself included.

“No?”  Luke looked curious; Mara just looked at Obi-Wan as if he’d destroyed her favorite blaster.  “If it’s not a species thing, what is it?”

“It’s more that both species are inclined to breed strong-willed individuals.  It’s part of their culture—thousands of years of heritage.  There are Hutts and Toydarians susceptible to mind tricks, but they’re rare, whereas in humans it’s often the opposite.”

“Our cultures tend to be diverse, mobile, and not necessarily based upon being strong-willed,” Mara murmured, her interest finally caught.  “Not when blasters are easier.”

“Finding someone who resided on Tatooine who would be susceptible to mind tricks with the Force would be a failing, frustrating effort,” Obi-Wan said, which made Luke’s lips twitch in a restrained smile.  He already understood why.  “You have to be strong-willed to survive the environment, and with that mindset, silly tricks are just that.  Even the Jawas are highly resistant, and they’re an easily distracted lot.”

Luke seemed thoughtful, but it was a mask for curiosity.  Obi-Wan blamed his mother for that one.  “Back to the other subject for a sec, though—why were you supposed to kill me?”

Mara glanced away.  “The Emperor wanted you dead.”

“Huh.”  Luke shook his head.  “He really needed to make up his damned mind, then.”

Mara whirled back around to stare at him.  “ _What?_   Why do you say that?”

Luke seemed surprised by her reaction.  “Well, the Emperor wanted me to kill Vader and take his place.  He only decided he wanted me dead when I really made my point about saying no.”

Mara’s face twisted up in disgust, horror, and shock.  “Replace Vader?  You would have been _terrible_ at his job!  What was the Emperor even—I don’t—that makes no sense at all!”

“Thanks?” Luke ventured.

“And you!  I don’t want to hear a word!” Mara ordered, pointing at Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan gave her a look of true innocence.  “I wasn’t actually going to say anything.”

“No thinking it, either!”

“In all honesty, Mara, the only thing I was thinking was that food sounded wonderful, and I imagine it would also sound excellent to those who are just returning from a battle,” Obi-Wan said.

“That’s it?” Mara asked.  He nodded.  She glared at him, still suspicious.  “Fine.  I’ll go tell Ghulam—Skywalker got an alert while you were tranced down that they were incoming; they’re about a half-hour out at this point.”

“That’s good timing then, isn’t it?” Obi-Wan asked, and smiled when she glowered at him before leaving the room.

“Is that the only thing you were thinking?” Luke asked, after Obi-Wan heard the outer hall bulkhead door slide shut.

“No.  I was thinking that moment may have been the final nail in the coffin for the programming and training the Emperor put her through, making that allegiance so very dead.” 

Obi-Wan smiled, allowing himself a tightly shielded moment of an emotion that flared up from his core, feeling very much like joy.  “And I was thinking of how proud I am of a woman who is, for all intents and purposes, my daughter.”

Luke gave him a strange look.  “Artoo said you were a Rhen’s offspring—oh.  Oh.  Oh, wow.”

Obi-Wan nodded.  “At some point, the Emperor attempted a cloning project, and she must have been the result he accepted.”

Luke’s gaze saddened.  “And you didn’t know.”

Obi-Wan shook his head.  “If I had?  I would have burned Coruscant to ash, if that’s what it had taken to retrieve her, to make her safe.  But no, I didn’t know, not even after I died.  I didn’t realize it until our medical officer on Lothal came up to me in private and told me that our DNA was a definitive family match.  All I can do is to be what she needs _now,_ and that is someone who understands where she’s been, but also where she wishes to go.”

“You shouldn’t feel guilty about things you literally had no control over,” Luke said, and Obi-Wan frowned.  His guilt was his own business—fuck, he’d forgotten what it was like, hanging around with young, perceptive Skywalkers.  “She doesn’t know, either, does she?”

“I think she suspects,” Obi-Wan replied, trying to box the guilt back up, along with the joy.  Those were his; no one else’s.  “She’s not stupid, or foolish.  But right now, it would be one burden too many.”

“Like you thought…Vader and Anakin Skywalker being the same would be too many burdens at once for me,” Luke said in a soft voice.

Obi-Wan sighed.  “I wanted to tell you, but after you’d had time to grasp multiple ideas.  Yoda was utterly against it, though.”

“Why?”

“He had lost a vital part of himself to Order 66, Luke,” Obi-Wan said.  “We all did, those few of us who survived.  All Yoda wanted was a weapon that would destroy the Sith.  He didn’t want his weapon to think about the fact that he would also be destroying a parent.”

Luke nodded.  “Yeah, I kind of…got that.  Understood, I mean, after a while.  I’m still not sorry I didn’t listen to him about it.”

Obi-Wan smiled.  “And I am very glad that you're not.”

**Author's Note:**

> Translations!
> 
> “Nunarir ash’am ni,” Echo hissed at him. [Don’t change (die) without me.]
> 
> Slick glared back. “Don’t you even fuckin’ pull that right now, Eyayah.” [Echo]
> 
> “Rujii nunarir as gar ganar kriffing jaro!” [Then don’t act like you have (a) death wish!]
> 
> “What are they saying?” Tano asked.
> 
> Skywalker tilted his head. “Lovers’ spat?”
> 
> “I do not have a—” Slick drew in a breath and changed tactics. “Kriffing usen’ye!” [Fucking piss off!] he told Skywalker, because tradition, and then went back to glaring at Echo. “Ni nunarir ganar kriffing jaro! Ibac cuy’gar kriffing shabiir!” [I don’t have a fucking death wish! That’s your fucking problem! (Lit: That be your fucking screw-up!)]
> 
> Echo’s eyes narrowed to glittering, angry slits. “Nu daar, cu kriffing r’nu! Tion’jor narir gar sirbur ibac osik?” [No, it kriffing isn’t! (Lit: No, never (emphatic use) it fucking was not!) Why do you say that shit?]
> 
> “Gar hiibir kriffing resol tracy’uur’nyn sha kyr’ysc Imperial yaim’aru ru’naast’mhi!” Slick yelled. “Tion’jor nu ibac sosol ti jaro?” [You took six fucking blaster shots at the last Imperial base we destroyed! (Lit: You took fucking six blaster hits at last Imperial enemy-home we destroyed!) Why doesn’t that equal death wish? (Lit: Why not that equal with death wish?)]
> 
> “Ni ganar ner kriffing beskar’gam!” [I’m wearing fucking body armor! (Lit: I have my fucking armor!)]
> 
> “Tion narir gar mirdir ad’eta’sheyn simir’ruug’la shuk’yc taab’gota banar at cuy?” Slick asked in a snide voice. [What do you think twenty-eight-year-old outdated prosthetics happen to be? (Lit: What do you think twenty-eight-year-old broken foot-machine happen to be?)]
> 
> “Scrap metal, after you blew it up,” Jesse said.
> 
> Echo and Slick rounded on the asshole interrupting them. “VENCUYANI DAYN IBIC!” [Stay (Keep) out of this!]
> 
> Jesse held up both hands. “Sheesh, fine, I’m sorry I interrupted the foreplay!”


End file.
